Periodic Table of Haiku
Description
This is a great website that was forwarded to me by a friend. Broaden students' scientific communication skills by condensing the descriptive chemistry of an element down to a haiku.
Student-Led Organometallics
Description
I teach my organometallics course, a junior/senior level half-course, entirely as student-led presentations of the primary literature. In the past, the course was populated almost entirely with seniors who had already taken a one-semester advanced inorganic course. This past year, I taught it to juniors and seniors, and the juniors had not taken inorganic yet. A description of the course first appeared in J. Chem. Educ. in 2007 (link below). This VIPEr learning object is an update of the original paper based on my experience over the past two years.
Sol-Gel Silica: Nanoarchitectures of Being and Nothingness
Description
In this lab experiment, students use sol-gel chemistry to prepare silica gel monoliths from tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS). Carrying out the hydrolysis and condensation under acid-catalyzed vs.
Energy Nuggets: MOF’s for CO2 Sequestration
Description
This literature discussion activity is one of a series of “Energy Nuggets,” small curricular units designed to illustrate: The Role of Inorganic Chemistry in the Global Challenge for Clean Energy Production, Storage, and Use.
Materials Chemistry: UW MRSEC Library of Slide Shows for Class Presentations
Description
The Interdisciplinary Education Group at the University of Wisconsin Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) has a fabulous website with a wide variety of great resources for teaching about materials and the nanoworld at all levels. A favorite "corner" of this website that I refer to a lot in my own teaching is the library of so-called Resource Slides on a variety of topics. These Resource Slides are divided up into 36 topical Slide Shows and include wonderful graphics to use in class presentations. Slide Shows include:
Literature Searching: Understanding Handbooks
Description
To allow students to become familiar with the structure of chemical literature and provide them with an understanding of several types of basic handbooks.
Interactive Spreadsheets for Inorganic Chemistry
Description
This web site contains a number of interactive spreadsheets, most of which are applicable to inorganic chemistry (or a physical chemistry class that uses inorganic examples). Here's the list of the most relevant for most inorganic classes:
ABC kinetics - interactively plot concentration versus reaction extent for A, B and C in A -> B -> C by varying k values
House: Inorganic Chemistry
Description
House (Inorganic chemistry): The book is divided into 5 parts: first, an introductory section on atomic structure, symmetry, and bonding; second, ionic bonding and solids; third, acids, bases and nonaqueous solvents; fourth, descriptive chemistry; and fifth, coordination chemistry. The first three sections are short, 2-4 chapters each, while the descriptive section (five chapters) and coordination chemistry section (seven chapters covering ligand field theory, spectroscopy, synthesis and reaction chemistry, organometallics, and bioinorganic chemistry.) are longer. Each chapter includes
Inorganic Chemistry Just Makes You Want to Sing!
Description
Here is a fun way to learn about inorganic chemistry! These songs were composed and passed along to me by Tom Mallouk at Penn State with his permission to post here on VIPEr. I Can't Get No Bragg Diffraction was a joint effort put together one year at a Gordon Research Conference on Solid State Chemistry. Sorry, no recording! The tune n-doped, recorded by the Band Edges, covers the electronic structure behind semiconductor devices. Download the lyrics for both and the mp3 file for n-doped! There is a
Sherlock Holmes in Transition-Metal Chemistry
Description
This Challenge practices problem-solving and several different characterization techniques for coordination compounds. Inorganic Challenges are exercises designed to be solved by a small group of students. Some Challenges practice a problem-solving algorithm, some reinforce important concepts, and some involve creativity or games.