Maggie Geselbracht has a great fondness for compounds with too many nitrogen atoms next to each other. This is a collection of problem sets and class activites based on the structure, bonding, and spectroscopy of a number of such compounds, drawn from the recent literature.
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.
In Haverford College's course Chem 111:Structure and Bonding, we have included a workshop exercise that guides students through their first experience using electronic structure calculations. We use the WebMO interface along with Gaussian03, but the exercise could be adapted for other electronic structure programs. The general structure of the exercise is as follows:
This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structure of the carbonyl diazide molecule. This relatively simple molecule provides an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis structures and VSEPR theory to molecular structure, backed up by experimental data on bond distances and bond angles. Before tackling carbonyl diazide, the students warm up by considering the structures of hydrogen azide and the isolated azide ion. The reference to the original paper is
This set of experiments provides an introduction to simple inorganic synthesis and qualitative analysis of inorganic pigments. I have taught this series of experiments in my first semester junior level inorganic class for the past 5 years. In part 1, students synthesize five inorganic pigments. Part 2 involves identifying an unknown inorganic white pigment by chemical and physical tests. These
This presentation provides an inorganic chemist's perspective on metals used to make organ pipes and their corrosion and conservation. The slides highlight my own research in this area as well as work being done by other scientists around the world. The purpose of this learning object is to show students an application of inorganic chemistry that they probably have not encountered before and show an example of how analytical methods of materials chemistry can be used in conservation science.
In this laboratory experiment, students construct a solar cell from a combination of synthetic and natural materials. It touches on a variety of chemical principles (kinetics, photochemistry, electrochemistry, intermolecular forces, material properties); however, the primary aim is the experience of turning materials into components and then assembling them into a working device. This experiment is unique in that it emphasizes each material's function, and how its properties affect this function. Students can seal these solar cells and take them home afterward.
This book was originally written (full disclosure: I am one of the co-authors) for college teachers as a resource text to encourage and support the incorporation of more solid state and materials chemistry into the general chemistry curriculum. The Companion, as I refer to it, is filled with background material, demonstrations, laboratory experiments, and end-of-chapter problems that will aid the non-specialist in enriching their teaching with examples from the world of solid state materials. Although intended for a general chemistry audience, several of the chapters present fairly sophis