This is the third in a series of exercises used to teach computational chemistry. It has been adapted, with permission, from a Shodor CCCE exercise (http://www.computationalscience.org/ccce). It uses the WebMO interface for drawing structures and visualizing results. WebMO is a free web-based interface to computational chemistry packages (www.webmo.net).

In the exercise, students compare the computational results (structures and energies) for different theoretical methods and basis sets.

This in-class activity was designed for a Chemical Communications course with second-year students. It is the first part of a two-week segment in which students learn how to use Chemdraw (or similar drawing software) to create digital drawings of molecules.

This in-class activity was designed for a Chemical Communications course with second-year students. It is the second part of a two-week segment in which students learn how to use ChemDraw (or similar drawing software to create digital drawings of molecules).

This in-class group activity extends my original post by providing more examples of varying difficulty for students to assign MLXZ classifications and electron counts to organometallic complexes.  The answers to these are unambiguous within the CBC system, but they provide excellent starting points for conversation with students about bonding formalisms with organometallics.