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.

This literature discussion is based on a short JACS communication reporting the first isolable Sc(II) carbonyls (not a typo) and isocyanides.  The paper discusses some standard synthesis and characterization while exploring a more fundamental question regarding why Sc, a d-block metal, is considered a rare-earth and when it stops reacting analogously to the rare-earth metals.  The LO focuses on ye olde carbonyl stretching frequencies and back-bonding and makes a nice follow up to an introduction to that concept.  It tries to make students explicitly connect electron configuration to changes

This literature discussion was prepared as part of the 2025 ACS awards collection in honor of Gary J. Schrobilgen, winner of the M. Frederick Hawthorne Award in Main Group Inorganic Chemistry.

This literature discussion introduces students to various tetradentate ligands not commonly seen in textbooks.  Students can apply knowledge of ligand binding to predict coordination geometry while exploring how the 3D nature of more complex ligands can affect their coordination to a metal.