In this activity, students will use gummies and toothpicks to construct models of molecules that will then be analyzed for their symmetry elements, and ultimately placed into the correct point group and the models can then be consumed.
In the 2013 Inorganic Curriculum Survey, respondents were asked about the resources they used when they teach inorganic chemistry. About 20% of respondents selected "other" and provided information about these resources. A number of people mentioned specific websites. This collection consists of the websites submitted in the survey.
A series of JAVA applets of Tanbe-Sugano diagrams were developed by Prof. Robert Lancashire at the University of the West Indies. These diagrams allow students to determine deltao/B values based on ratios of peak energies without the pain of rulers and drawing lines. There are also features that allow a person to input values and automatically calculate certain parameters. You can also quickly find values of delta_o and B for certain complexes via a drop-down menu on some of the pages (e.g. Cr3+ complexes).
It is the classic game of telephone (or whatever local varient name you might use). Put a bunch of people in a line. Start by whispering something to the first person and then have them whisper it to the next. This process continues until the last person states out loud what they heard. Usually the starting and ending statements are quite different. When students are reading a paper, it is fairly likely that they feel anything the paper they are reading says about a reference is correct.
This in-class group activity provides several examples of varying difficulty for students to assign MLXZ classifications and electron counts to organometallic complexes. Though some of the problems are straightforward, some are really ambiguous, and the intent is for student groups to grapple with the issues raised by each one and present their findings to the class to spark further discussion.
Students are asked to find a coordination complex in the recent literature and analyze its structure. This homework or in-class activity is a great way for the instructor to crowd source the discovery of interesting new complexes to use as material in future exams.
In this exercise, students are introduced to Mercury, a program for visualizing and analyzing crystal structure data. Students are guided through opening the program for the first time and viewing a structure from the Teaching Subset, a selection of structures from the Cambridge Crystallographic Database (CSD). Activites include changing the representation of the complex, moving the structure around the window, accessing information about the structure, and measuring bond lengths and angles within the structure.
This is a two-week lab in which students synthesize and then characterize three Werner cobalt complexes using IR, UV/VIS and computer calculations using Spartan. Syntheses are based on procedures from:
Angelici, R. J. Synthesis and Technique in Inorganic Chemistry. University Science Books, 1996, pp 13-17.
Borer, L.L.; Erdman, H.W.; Norris, C.; Williams, J.; Worrell, J. Synthesis of trans-Tetraamminedichlorocobalt (III) chloride, Inorganic Syntheses, Vol 31, 1997, pp 270-271.
In this activity, students apply knowledge of the trans effect to the synthesis of planar Pt(II) complexes that contain cis-amine/ammine motifs. These complexes are of interest as both potential novel chemotherapeutic Pt(II) complexes and as intermediates for promising chemotherapeutic drugs such as satraplatin. The questions in this LO are based on recent research described in the paper “Improvements in the synthesis and understanding of the iodo-bridged intermediate en route to the Pt(IV) prodrug satraplatin,” by Timothy C. Johnstone and Stephen C.