Upper division literature discussion of a JACS paper on electrocatalysis. This activity serves as an introductory look at the paper as a homework assignment to prepare the student for a more in depth class discussion.
This literature discussion is meant to give students an understanding of both the key concept-driven and more “meta” information of a literature paper. Students will use Jillian Dempsey’s paper, “Electrochemical hydrogenation of a homogeneous nickel complex to form a surface-adsorbed hydrogen-evolving species,” to investigate paper authorship, how the scientific method is used in research, and how to understand the important findings of a research article.
Reference: Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 5290-5293
DOI:10.1039/C4CC08662G
This is a learning object focused on discussing application of the scientific method in the chemical literature. This focuses on the paper “Nickel-Iron Oxyhydroxide Oxygen-Evolution Electrocatalysts: The Role of Intentional and Incidental Iron Incorporation” (J. Am. Chem.
This lab exercise gives students a problem scenario (a mixture of 4 solids) and asks them to determine a way to separate them from each other utilizing experimentation, previous knowledge, and discussion. Students are expected to write a standard operating procedure detailing the method they determine for the separation at the end of the lab. A modified version of this lab was originally performed in an accelerated summer class on chemistry given to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders that were on a track for early entrance into college. The lab was done over the c
This is a presentation to introduce students to Toulmin’s Argumentation Scheme in the context of providing explanations in Inorganic Chemistry. It was inspired by discussions with Rick Moog at Franklin & Marshall College regarding how to encourage students to fully explain the “why” behind chemical behavior, rather than simply cite trends or equations. These slides were used to prompt a discussion about what a complete, logical explanation should include. They also served as a means of defining what is expected on quizzes and exams in response to various prompts.
Collection of Safety LOs from VIPEr
Asking students to work in groups and developing group projects is always challenging. This 5-slides about describes approaches for increasing the effectiveness and success of student groups. It also contains some helpful links to resources on how to form groups and help students develop group skills.
I asked the students in my junior/senior inorganic course to develop their own literature discussion learning objects and lead the rest of the class in a discussion of their article. Student Johann Maradiaga chose this article describing the synthesis and characterization of Fe2GeS4 nanocrystals with potential applications in photovoltaic devices (Sarah J. Fredrick and Amy L. Prieto, “Solution Synthesis and Reactivity of Colloidal Fe2GeS4: A Potential Candidate for Earth Abundant, Nanostructured Photovoltaics” J. Am. Chem.
This is a kinesthetic activity in which students must utilize knowledge of the σ-donating, π-donating and π-accepting ability of ligands in order to rank the ligands in the spectrochemical series. Students are each assigned a ligand on a card. Suggested ligands are I-, Br-, Cl-, F-, ONO-, NO2- OH-, H2O, pyridine, NH3, ethylenediamine, bipyridine, phenanthroline, PPh3, CN- and CO. Each student must evaluate the π-accepting, π-donating and σ-donating ability o