Moleculuar Computation and Visualization in Undergraduate Education (MoleCVUE)

Submitted by Kevin Range / Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania on Fri, 08/09/2024 - 13:01
Description

The MoleCVUE website contains several items that should be of interest to the VIPEr community, especially the activities.  Each activity is designed to be ready to deploy in lecture, laboratory, or as homework.  There are activities covering all of the major subdisciplines of chemistry (some more than others).  Some activities that might be of particular interest to VIPEr are "Group Theory", "VSEPR", and "Electron Configurations of Atoms and Ions".  All of the activities are written to use WebMO, but could be adapted for other systems.  Most activities are doable with the free or demo versi

Literature Discussion Group Project

Submitted by Wes Farrell / United States Naval Academy on Mon, 08/05/2024 - 14:23
Description

This is a literature-based end of semester project.  After a semester of introducing literature in the form of typical literature discussions, this assignment is given to small groups.  It may be easily amended or added to.  Each group is provided with a paper and accompanying questions that are similar to the literature discussions they have done over the semester.  They then must use these guiding questions to assemble a presentation to the class.  The topics chosen and the guiding questions are designed to provide students with a taste of the many areas of inorganic chemistry that are no

Literature discussion for “Synthesis and characterization of a formal 21-electron cobaltocene derivative.”

Submitted by Wes Farrell / United States Naval Academy on Wed, 05/15/2024 - 14:34
Description

This is a literature discussion regarding electron counting.  It involves several opportunities for students to use CBC to determine electron counts themselves.  Then, it demonstrates the first case of a 21-electron complex, which leads to great discussion regarding the 18-electron rule.  Throughout the discussion, students are introduced to many structural and spectrochemical analyses, some of which may be new to them.

Theoretical Analysis of Fe K-edge XANES on Iron Pentacarbonyl

Submitted by Prajay Patel / University of Dallas on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 15:01
Description

This article focuses on a theoretical analysis of K-edge X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) of Fe(CO)5 in the D3h and C4v geometries. For the context of a one semester inorganic chemistry / physical inorganic chemistry course, the authors use computational methods and experimental X-ray techniques to generate the XANES spectra of two different geometries of Fe(CO)5. Densities of states are used to show overlap between specific orbitals (Fe p with C p), indicating pi-backbonding.

The elusive tetrabenzylthorium compound (Bart)

Submitted by Joanne Stewart / Hope College on Thu, 03/14/2024 - 20:09
Description

This literature discussion learning object describes the isolation and structure of tetrabenzylthorium, a molecule that was synthesized many years ago but was never thoroughly characterized.

New Members of the Class of [Fe(CN)x(CO)y] Compounds (Koch)

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:23
Description

This LO was written by the IONiC Leadership Council to celebrate Steve Koch as the recipient of the 2024 ACS Award for Distinguished Service in Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. Steve has been a major supporter of the IONiC community since its inception. This LO is based on the article New Members of the Class of [Fe(CN)x(CO)y] Compounds. published in Inorganic Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/ic015604y).

Synthesis of Ti complexes supported by an ortho-terphenoxide

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Thu, 01/04/2024 - 16:21
Description

The Tonks group has helped to revitalize interest in early metal, especially titanium, organometallic chemistry in recent years. Often his group uses Ti complexes for multi-component coupling, increasingly with masked low-valent Ti(II) as an important intermediate. This paper is more fundamental, exploring a ligand based on ortho-terphenoxide since the meta- and para- derivatives were already known. Along the way, they report some interesting NMR and structural information, and finish with some hydroamination catalysis. 

An Exploration of Molecular Dihydrogen Complexes

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Mon, 11/27/2023 - 14:41
Description

I wanted my organometallic class to explore the bonding and spectroscopy of the Kubas dihydrogen complex without having to spend the time doing the entire literature discussion (which is really great and I have done it many times in the past) because I wanted to do it in only about 20-30 minutes in a 75 minute class period. Most of the questions come from the Kubas literature discussion, which I shortened. The IR and reduced mass calculations come from an LO I wrote about arene activation by Jones and Feher.

Electron Transfer through a Photosynthetic Reaction Center

Submitted by Levi Ekanger / The College of New Jersey on Thu, 09/07/2023 - 16:23
Description

This is a computer-based activity intended for a bioinorganic chemistry course composed of upper-level undergraduate students. It is helpful for students to be familiar with concepts of electron transfer, including a surface-level introduction to Marcus theory and the inverted region, and photosynthetic charge separation before beginning this activity. However, this activity can easily be adapted to students with other levels of preparation in a bioinorganic course.