This learning object focuses on the new video series, “Voices in Inorganic Chemistry,” established to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the American Chemical Society journal, Inorganic Chemistry. The are currently 12 videos celebrating pioneers in the field of inorganic chemistry.  This activity consists of two components, namely the students watching one interview and writing an essay about their chosen inorganic chemist.

Determining the reactive intermediates in metalloenzymes is a very involved task, and requires drawing from many different spectroscopies and physical methods.  The facile activation and oxidation of methane to produce methanol is one of the "holy grails" of inorganic chemistry.  Strategies exist within materials science and organometallic chemistry to activate methane, but using the enzyme methane monooxygenase, nature is able to carry out this difficult reaction at ambient temperatures and pressures (and in water, too!).

This is an in class exercise that I use to emphasize the need for metal ion transport and storage in biochemistry.  Applying the Van't Hoff equation to the Ksp value at 25°C for ferric hydroxide, students calculate the iron concentration at which ferric hydroxide would begin to precipitate out in the blood.  It' s an interesting problem that requires very little math beyond that used in gen chem, and the answer is in stark contrast to the amount of iron that we actually store in our bodies.