BITeS

Thanks to our community

Submitted by Flo / Slytherin' State on Sun, 04/12/2015 - 15:51

While at the ACS meeting in Denver I was simply in awe at just how amazing this community is. The talks were excellent. It is certainly a privilege to have a front row seat, but I do wish Chip Nataro would stop taking me away from my perch during his talks. Our poster sessions were terrific.

A Different Kind of Class

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Fri, 04/03/2015 - 16:03

While in Denver, I missed two days of lecture for my sophomore inorganic class. Normally I would have just skipped them, but I ended up with some pretty tough time constraints and was left in a pinch of really needing to cover some material. I decided that I couldn’t just skip the classes, but I also knew that attempting to make them up outside the normally scheduled time would be next to impossible. So, I decided to hold class remotely.

Slithering up the Rockies

Submitted by Flo / Slytherin' State on Thu, 03/12/2015 - 13:27

It's hard to believe that we are a little over a week away from the ACS meeting in Denver. As always, VIPEr will be well represented at the meeting. You can get the full details for our technical program from ACS, but I thought it was worth giving you a brief synopsis.

We kick things off Sunday morning with 8 talks on coordination chemistry hosted by Chris Hamaker.

MO Theory, mo problems

Submitted by Nancy Williams / Scripps College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College on Sun, 03/08/2015 - 14:46

Some of you have already taken advantage of the hard work you've done this semester to create cool symmetry and MO problems, and shared the fruits of your labor with the community as part of our second Community Challenge!

For those who have been meaning to do so, but last week just got too busy, please feel free to submit something! We'll publish the collection of submissions this Friday, but we're publishing the LOs as they come in!

 

Is it international inorganic chemistry week and no one told us?

Submitted by Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College on Thu, 03/05/2015 - 10:08

The Journal of Chemical Education has released a trio of articles in the past couple of days that should be of interest to inorganic chemists.  Two were highlighted as the ACS Editor's Choice selection for Tues, March 3 and Wed, March 4.

Building skills across the chemistry curriculum

Submitted by Joanne Stewart / Hope College on Sun, 03/01/2015 - 20:42
One of the things that I like about my department is that we seem to be able to balance working very independently with just enough togetherness (but not too much) when it counts. For example, while each lab course we teach has different writing requirements, the writing expectations are coordinated and build intentionally from gen chem to organic to more advanced courses.

We have also applied this developmental approach to computational chemistry. General chemistry students predict structures with VSEPR and then explore the shapes and physical properties of these molecules computationally.

Come on, Spring Break!

Submitted by Sheila Smith / University of Michigan- Dearborn on Thu, 02/19/2015 - 14:26

Here we are in the murky middle of the semester when all I can think about is a week off from teaching.  Friday can’t come too soon, and then I have a week that is mine…A week to prep for ACS...Denver is coming fast.  A week to catch up on grading and writing and gasp!... reading the piles of primary literature articles that I have stacked on my desk for when I have time.  Time to put some of the good stuff that I’ve done this semester on VIPEr maybe?  Time to plan for the summer workshop on Catalysis in Seattle?

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words. . .

Submitted by Betsy Jamieson / Smith College on Mon, 02/09/2015 - 13:00

One of the things that we are hoping to do in our blog posts this year is to highlight some LOs on the site that we've found useful in class.  I'm teaching inorganic this semester and would like to mention two LOs that I've used recently in class to help students visualize delta and lambda stereoisomers and find symmetry operations.