For years, I spent 2-3 days a semester working through Tanabe-Sugano diagrams, their development from terms, their evolution from Orgel diagrams, their analysis to give transition energies (the old ruler- trial and error analysis) and nephalauxetic parameters. Recently, colleagues in VIPEr convinced me that my time in class could be better spent, but I am not willing to completely give up on Tanabe-Sugano.
This is a lab experiment designed to cover an array of techniques, including metal complex synthesis, spectroscopy and electrochemistry. Overall, the goal is to synthesize the metal complex Ru(bpy)32+, exchange the counter ion to demonstrate changes in solubility, absorbance and emission properties (including excited state quenching through energy and electron transfer, and ground state oxidation), as well as cyclic voltammetry of the complex.
Early in 2009, Christopher Cummins’ group at MIT reported (in Science) the synthesis of AsP3, a compound that had never been isolated at room temperature. Later that year, a full article was published in JACS comparing the properties and reactivity of AsP3 to those of its molecular cousins, P4 and As4. The longer article is full of possibilities for discussion in inorganic chemistry courses, with topics including periodic trends, NMR, vibrational spectroscopy, electrochemistry, molecular orbital theory, and coordination chemistry.
This communication from the Journal of the American Chemical Society (J. Am. Chem. Soc.
This is a website which links to a wide variety of good quality YouTube mini-lectures on basic topics in chemistry, mathematics, physics and a variety of other sciences. Each video is about 10 minutes long and many go through example problems slowly and completely.
http://assign3.chem.usyd.edu.au/spectroscopy/index.php
A series of Java tools for learning about the relationship between molecular parameters (size, mass etc) and the form of the spectral trace. These cover rotational, vibrational, ro-vibrational and electronic spectroscopy.