For many years I have resisted using clickers, mainly because at our university there is no standard universal clicker. I wanted to keep student costs as low as possible but also desired the type of live feedback during a lecture that clicker questions can provide. In both my general chem. (200-300 students) and upper division courses (50-75 students), I now pass out 4 or 5 colored notecards on the first day of class and make sure everyone has one of each color.

This activity is meant to teach students about the types of homogeneous transition metal C-H bond functionalization catalysts. Before class, the students will read a short discussion of inner- and outer-sphere C-H bond functionalization catalysts. Then they will use their knowledge of transition metal oxidation states and ligands in order to assess whether a variety of catalysts react via inner- or outer-sphere pathways.

There are three ways to modulate the redox potential of a metalloenzyme:  Changing ligands, changing geometry, and changing solvent. When I introduce this topic in Bioinorganic, I try to give my students concrete examples of each.  I love this one because it applies what they learned in Gen Chem about the Nernst Equation to a biological problem.  Granted, I don't use a metalloenzyme as my example, but I do pull the biological chemistry into it at the end, by referrring to the cytochrome oxidase/O₂ couple.  

I use this introductory exercise at the beginning (the very first thing) of my one semester topics course in Bioinorganic Chemistry and as the first exercise in my Bioinorganic unit in my senior level Inorganic Course.  The exercise is a very simple one, but generates a lot of great discussion, requiring students to access knowledge from prior chemistry and biology courses, as well s common knowledge from sources external to their academic career.  Students are often surprised to see how much they know before a topic is covered.  

Students in the courses I teach (primarily general chemistry) have struggled with understanding the three representations of matter: macroscopic, particle, and symbolic. This is particularly evident when these representations extend into reactions. Additionally, students struggle with understanding basic concepts of aqueous solutions and, by extension, reactions in aqueous solution. This activity is designed to help the students recognize different types of representations and then generate these for simple systems.

This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structures of a series of salts of the [XeF]⁺ cation.  The [MF₆]^– and [M₂F₁₁]^– anions (M = As, Sb, Bi) were used as counterions, and in all cases, the [XeF]⁺ cation interacts with the anion via a weak bond between the Xe and a fluoride of the anion to form an ion-pair in the crystalline solid.  These somewhat unusual ions provide an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis stru