In this exercise, students are introduced to Mercury, a program for visualizing and analyzing crystal structure data.  Students are guided through opening the program for the first time and viewing a structure from the Teaching Subset, a selection of structures from the Cambridge Crystallographic Database (CSD). Activites include changing the representation of the complex, moving the structure around the window, accessing information about the structure, and measuring bond lengths and angles within the structure.

This set of questions was used to promote discussion within small groups (3 to 4 students) on how changing ligand properties can have dramatic effects on the product distributions in Pd-catalyzed cross coupling reactions.  The questions are pretty difficult and not always straightforward, partly because they are derived from the primary literature and thus inherently "messy".

Students use a Java-based website to explore the faujasite zeolite structure. The activity questions guide them through identifying different atomic positions within the structure, and orienting the zeolite pores and "cages" relative to the crystal axes. 

In this activity, students apply knowledge of the trans effect to the synthesis of planar Pt(II) complexes that contain cis-amine/ammine motifs.  These complexes are of interest as both potential novel chemotherapeutic Pt(II) complexes and as intermediates for promising chemotherapeutic drugs such as satraplatin.  The questions in this LO are based on recent research described in the paper “Improvements in the synthesis and understanding of the iodo-bridged intermediate en route to the Pt(IV) prodrug satraplatin,” by Timothy C. Johnstone and Stephen C.

In this activity, the provided d orbital splitting patterns need to be matched with ligand geometries. Students are provided with the d orbital splitting diagrams for 6 ligand geometries (octahedral, trigonal bipyramidal, square pyramidal, tetrahedral, square planar, and linear). A web browser is used to view an animation (developed by Flick Coleman) which allows for the visualization of the relationship between the positions of the metal d orbitals and the ligands. Given this information, students should then be able to qualitatively rank the orbitals from highest to lowest energy.