This acitivty is a foundation level discussion of the Nicolai Lehnert paper, "Mechanism of N-N Bond Formation by Transition Metal-Nitrosyl Complexes: Modeling Flavodiiron Nitric Oxide Reductases". Its focus lies in discussing MO theory as it relates to Lewis structures, as well as an analysis of the strucutre of a literature paper.
In honor of Professor Richard Andersen’s 75th birthday, a small group of IONiC leaders submitted a paper to a special issue of
In this literature assignment, students are asked to read an article from the primary literature on a binuclear manganese-peroxo complex that is similar to species proposed to be involved in photosynthetic water splitting and DNA biosynthesis. The assignment contains 25 questions that are intended to guide students through the article and help them extract important information about the work. The completed questions are then used as the basis for an in-class discussion of model complexes, which leads to a more advanced discussion on the topic.
This is a great app that helps students see the symmetry in molecules. It allows you to choose a molecule (by name, structure, or point group) and display a 3D rendition of it. You can then have it display the symmetry elements, and/or apply all the symmetry operations.
It is available for both android and apple phones: (probably easier to just search for it)
apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/3d-sym-op/id1067556681?mt=8
This morning before class I was picking on one of my students for having her organic chemistry textbook out on her desk. I believe I said something along the lines of 'how dare you contaminate my classroom with that!' She explained how she had an exam today and I let it drop. That is until later in the class when I was teaching about chelates. I had a sudden inspiration. I asked the student to pick up her organic book with one hand. I then warned her that I was going to smack the book. I did and she dropped it.
Students are confronted with a number of new types of isomerism as they move from organic chemistry into inorganic chemistry. This can be confusing and students often have trouble visualizing structures and differentiating between isomers. In this exercise, students are asked to examine a number of different crystal structures from the Teaching Subset (distributed with Mercury version 3.10, early 2018) of the Cambridge Structural Database.
In the primary literature, goemetry indices are being used quite often to describe four- and five-coordinate structures adopted by transition metal complexes. This slide deck, which is longer than the intended 5 slides, describes the three common geometry indices (tau4, tau4', and tau5) and provides example calculations for structures that are freely available in the Teaching Subset of the Cambridge Structural Database. (Students can access these structures in Mercury, which is freely available from the CCDC, or via a web request form for which the link is provided below.)
This learning object focuses on teaching students how to read and use Chemical and Engineering News for class discussions and critically evaluate the scientific literature. Recently, Chemical and Engineering News published an article about the retraction of a 15-year old paper, which had misidentified a multidentate ligand, which is central to the paper (Ritter, S.K. “Chemist Retract 15-year old paper and publish a revised version.” Chem. Eng. News, 2017, 95, (36), p6).
This activity was designed as an in-class group activity, in which students begin by using basic principles to predict relative toxicities and roles of metals in biological systems. Students then learn about the structures of metallothioneins using information from the protein data bank (PDB) and 113Cd NMR data. By the end of the activity, students will have analyzed data to identify and determine bonding models and coordination sites for multiple cadmium centers in metallothioneins. It is based on recent literature, but does not require students to have read the papers before class.
A brief introduction to agostic interactions and their importance to common organometallic mechanisms such as beta-hydride elimination. Examples of compounds containing these interactions are discussed and compared to familiar molecules such as diborane. Ways to characterize these interactions are also introduced.
Slides are based on the PNAS review Agostic Interactions in Transition Metal Compounds
Brookheart, Green, and Parkin Proc. Natl. Acad.Sci. 2007, 104(7), 6908-6914