The Sheffield Chemputer is a site that does a variety of calculations including: isotope patterns, element percentages, reaction yields, oxidation states (for transition metal complexes), electron accounting (for metal complexes), VSEPR shape and classification using the CBC method. At the initial point of this post (April 29, 2014) parts of the site are still under development, but it seems to be off to a good start.
This in-class activity walks students through the preparation of a molecular-orbital diagram for methane in a square-planar environment. The students generate ligand-group orbitals (LGOs) for the set of 4 H(1s) orbitals and then interact these with carbon, ultimately finding that such a geometry is strongly disfavored because it does not maximize H/C bonding and leaves a lone pair on C.
Having been inspired by a number of wonderful LOs, I introduced group theory in my 'sophomore' inorganic class this spring. In addition to learning to determine the point group of a molecule, students were taught how to construct a qualitative MO diagram though the use of LGOs. While a little more than 5 slides, this is what I used in lecture to cover the material.
While informally chatting with friends in our math department, I realized that I could put together a presentation about how chemists use group theory. I was invited to give the presentation as part of our math department's weekly colloquium series. The talk was to be one hour in length, and my math colleague described their typical format as:
Having been inspired by a number of wonderful LOs, I introduced group theory in my 'sophomore' inorganic class this spring. In addition to learning to determine the point group of a molecule, students were taught how to construct a qualitative MO diagram though the use of LGOs. While this course can be taken with or without the laboratory component, it seemed only natural to include a lab on this material. A previous lab had introduced the students to computational methods for geometry optimization.
Thanks to information first provided to me by Prof. Brian M. Hoffman, Northwestern University, I believe that the first documented use of the term "bioinorganic chemistry" occurred at a meeting held at Virginia Tech (VPI&SU) in June, 1970. This meeting was jointly organized with Canadian researchers and was thus an international meeting.
This meeting resulted in an Advances in Chemistry Series book, which has the following URL:
Every day when I teach Inorganic Chemistry (and in most of my problem sets and take home exams) I create Web pages to show 3D images of selected molecules to my students. I am a visual learner and I find the structures beautiful and informative.
In the past few months, you likely have found that web sites scripted with Jmol scripts calling a Jmol applet (which is a Java applet) are blocked.
Two excellent video presentations on symmetry. The Ted Talk by Marcus du Sautoy is an excellent introduction to the concept of symmetry and systematically describing it. In "Impossible Crystals" Nobel Laureate and physicist Paul Steinhardt discusses the creation of "Impossible crystals": quasi-crystals with five-fold symmetry previously believed impossible.
This exercise was developed to help students predict bonding between s,p and d atomic orbitals.
A literature discussion based on an interesting paper from Bernhard and Albrecht about a catalytic water oxidation promoted by irdium complexes featuring abnormal/mesoionic NHC ligands.
I used this in an upper-level Organometallics course after discussing NHC ligands in class.