This in-class worksheet introduces students to the different ways we describe organometallic ligands – bonding, properties, spectroscopy, etc. – using carbon monoxide as an example. It is structured as an inquiry-based activity, where students work together in small groups but check in with the entire class at appropriate intervals. I plan to use this activity with my advanced inorganic students next year.
This activity was adapted from the J. Chem. Ed. article, “Discrepant Event: The Great Bowling Ball Float-Off.” In this activity students use a bowling ball and some basic materials to predict whether the ball will sink or float in a tub of liquid.
chapter 1 of George Stanley's Organometallics course: Introduction, Orbitals, Electron counting
This chapter is an overview of the field, with an emphasis on electron counting
The powerpoint slides contain answers to some of the in-class exercises, so those are behind the "faculty only" wall. I shares these with students after the class, but not before.
everyone is more than welcome to edit the materials to suit their own uses, and I would appreciate being notified of any mistakes that are found.
This in-class activity is designed to follow the linked lecture/demonstration on soapmaking. The soaps cure enough to be handled in 48 hours if kept warm, and the students can feel the difference in the canola/coconut oil soaps.
The calcuations go through the major reactions, functional groups, and physical properties of soap molecules, and ends with the calculation of molecular weight for a mixture of substances. This could be related to a later polymer unit.
This is a short presentation that outlines the major chemical reactions of soapmaking. Included are instructions for making two soaps, one from canola oil, the other from coconut oil. These two soaps have very different hardnesses, which can be explained by examining the structures of the oils. If you have never made soap before, it isn't that difficult, but it does use concentrated NaOH so is very caustic before the reaction is done. The linked websited have good instructions for soapmaking as well.
This list includes a number of LOs to help in teaching nanomaterials subjects; however, it is not exhaustive.
Updated June 2018.
ColourLex (colourlex.com) is an amazing website that mixes chemistry and art. The creators of this website have extensively catalogued paintings and the pigments that were used to create them. The pigments range from artificial to natural and organic to inorganic. You can search for the specific combination that you want to see.
In this experiment, students will synthesize and characterize one of three Ag(I) cyanoximate complexes as potential antimicrobial agents for use in dental implants. This experiment combines simple ligand synthesis, metalation and characterization, and a biomedical application. The complexes are both air and light stable.
The following is a simple in-class “demonstration” that I use to segue between d to d and charge transfer transitions. After teaching about d to d transitions and Tanabe-Sugano Diagrams, I show my students three solutions that I have put in large test tubes before class. The three solutions I place in the test tubes are:
a. 10 ml of 0.1M Co(H2O)62+
b. 10 ml of 0.1M Cu(H2O)62+
c. 10 ml of a freshly prepared 0.1 M KMnO4 solution
This learning object is based on discussion of the literature, but it follows a paper through the peer review process. Students first read the original submitted draft of a paper to ChemComm that looks at photochemical reduction of methyl viologen using CdSe quantum dots. There are several important themes relating to solar energy storage and the techniques discussed, UV/vis, SEM, TEM, electrochemistry, and catalysis, can be used for students in inorganic chemistry.