This paper in Science reports the synthesis of decamethyldizincocene, a stable compound of Zn(I) with a zinc-zinc bond. In the original LO, the title compound and the starting material, bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)zinc, offer a nice link to metallocene chemistry, electron counting, and different modes of binding of cyclopentadienyl rings as well as more advanced discussions of MO diagrams.
This course is a survey of the chemistry of the inorganic elements focusing on the relationship between electronic structure, physical properties, and reactivity across the periodic table. Topics to be covered include: atomic structure, chemical bonding, group theory, spectroscopy, crystal field theory, coordination chemistry, organometallic chemistry and catalysis, and bioinorganic chemistry. Prerequisites: Successful completion of CH120, CH121, (with a C- or better) and CH 301 (suggested)
Course Description: An overview course covering the fundamental principles and theories of inorganic chemistry, with emphasis on the chemistry of d-block elements. Included topics are molecular structure, electronic structure and spectra, bonding descriptions and reaction mechanisms of coordination complexes along with an introduction to organometallic compounds of d-block elements and an introduction to molecular symmetry and point groups.
Structure and bonding in inorganic systems are the general subjects of this course. Both main group and transition metal chemistry are discussed.
This course covers fundamentals of central topics in inorganic chemistry from historical to modern-day perspectives. Topics include: coordination compounds (history, structure, bonding theories, reactivity, applications); solid state chemistry (crystals, lattices, radius ratio rule, defect structures, silicates & other minerals); and descriptive chemistry of the elements.
The hyperphysics website uses concept maps as a way to organize physics content knowledge: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html (condensed matter). I cam across this website while doing a review of the literature on what students know about semiconductors. There are nice explanations of many of the topics associated with semiconductors and they are organized in an unique way.
I have had some students in class have a hard time identifying colors (flame tests, solution color, acid-base indicators, etc.) because of a visual impairment. There are many cell-phone apps that are helpful in aiding these students. "Pixel Picker" allows the students to load a picture from a device (cell phone, ipad). This is helpful because students are now dealing with a "frozen" image. Moving the cross-hair to different parts of the picture changes the R-G-B values. The "Color Blind Pal" app uses a more qualitative approach.
Four pairs of students represent quadruple bonding in metal complexes by "forming bonds" with a variety of physical methods involving actions like facing each other while holding hands (sigma bond), touch hands and feet of their partner "above and below" the plane (two pi bonds), touching hands and feet while facing each other (delta bond). This results in a "Twister"-like pile of students resembling the quadruple bonding interaction
This is a series of in-class exercises used to teach computational chemistry. The exercises have been updated and adapted, with permission, from the Shodor CCCE exercises (http://www.computationalscience.org/ccce). The directions provided in the student handouts use the WebMO interface for drawing structures and visualizing results. WebMO is a free web-based interface to computational chemistry packages (www.webmo.net).