SLiThErs - Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable

A collection of all of the IONiC VIPEr SLiThErs (Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable). These events are short presentations on a topic followed by a period of discussion between the presenter and live participants. Each of these events is recorded and posted to the IONiC VIPEr YouTube Channel.

Chip Nataro / Lafayette College Thu, 12/17/2020 - 14:18
Comparing the Solid- and Solution-State Stoichiometry of Metal Complexes with Schiff-base Ligands
Description

This research-based laboratory series investigates the stoichiometry of metal ion complexes of the Schiff-base ligand salicylaldehyde benzoyl hydrazone (SBH) in both the solid and solution states using gravimetric analysis and UV-VIS spectroscopy.

Peter Craig / McDaniel College Mon, 05/11/2026 - 17:32

Inorganic Chemistry

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Tue, 05/05/2026 - 20:56
Description

A Geometric Exploration of Metallic and Ionic Solid State Structure

Submitted by Jacob Lutter / University of Southern Indiana on Wed, 01/21/2026 - 17:12
Description

Two worksheets are given that walk students though visualizing and understanding solid state structure. The first worksheet focuses on metallic structure by introducing primitive, body-centered, and face-centered packing types in a cubic unit cell. Then, close packing structures are described followed by a discussion of holes in close packed or primitive packed lattices. The second worksheet introduces ionic solid structure types for the common binary salt lattices as well as perovskite and spinel structure types.

Hydrocyanation

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Mon, 07/07/2025 - 07:35
Description

This literature discussion was inspired by a talk given by Dr. Nora Radu, recipient of the 2025 ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. It is a bit 'big picture' in nature in that the hydrocyanation reaction is important for the synthesis of nylon. As such, there is a significant amount of background material relating to nylon-6,6. Students will read an article from C&EN, portions of a patent, and portions of an article from J. Chem.

COMFORT, A web resource for fragment molecular orbitals of simple fragments

Submitted by samuelson / Indian Institute of Science on Tue, 06/17/2025 - 02:56
Description

The website entitled COMFORT (https://ipc.iisc.ac.in/~ags/ip312/comfort.html) is a easy way to visualise fragment molecular orbitals of many different organic ligands and also metal fragments. One can match the frontier orbitals of the fragments to see if they can form stable molecules. It helps one to see how fragments of an octahedral organometallic complex can be stripped of its ligands one by one to generate fragments that can match organic ligands with multiple "pi" bonds.

3D Printed Crystal Structure Activity

Submitted by Chris Stromberg / Hood College on Wed, 03/19/2025 - 18:49
Description

This exercises uses beads to help show how different crystal structures are formed.  The exercise includes 3D-printed boxes with starting structures incorporated in the bottom to increase the stability of structures that students build.  The exercise also includes a number of additional 3D-printed manipulatives to help students visualize the unit cells and other properties of different crystal structures.  These include unit cells with accurate atomic and hold dimensions and several different ways to visualize the layer structures in close-packed structures.

Replace the Orbitron

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Mon, 02/10/2025 - 10:19
Description

There are several LO's on the site that use the Orbitron which unfortunately is no longer available. Here is another option that should allow use of those LO's.

Moleculuar Computation and Visualization in Undergraduate Education (MoleCVUE)

Submitted by Kevin Range / Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania on Fri, 08/09/2024 - 13:01
Description

The MoleCVUE website contains several items that should be of interest to the VIPEr community, especially the activities.  Each activity is designed to be ready to deploy in lecture, laboratory, or as homework.  There are activities covering all of the major subdisciplines of chemistry (some more than others).  Some activities that might be of particular interest to VIPEr are "Group Theory", "VSEPR", and "Electron Configurations of Atoms and Ions".  All of the activities are written to use WebMO, but could be adapted for other systems.  Most activities are doable with the free or demo versi