I used this Excel spreadsheet to generate bingo cards for teaching *organic* nomenclature and functional groups to first year students during a recitation section. I gave each student a handful of pennies and a bingo card generated randomly. The topics could be easily changed to inorganic nomenclature, solid state lattices, you name it. Its a quick way to review a small amount of material before an exam.
This in-class activity was used on the first day of Advanced Inorganic Chemistry in lieu of lecture to review symmetry operations and point groups in small molecules. The learning object was adapted to a small group discussion format from a fundamental quiz posted by Barbara Reisner (James Madison University) and a problem set question posted by Adam Johnson (Harvey Mudd College).
A neat site that quizzes you on chemical symbols (e.g., Ag for silver), and donates rice for right answers. Hey, if students are going to learn chemical symbols, they may as well do it in a game setting, and many will find it a touch less pointless if they're doing someone else some good at the same time.
In the past, I've always found the IUCr crystallographic pamphlets to be useful when teaching diffraction. They've reorganized their website to make their educational resources easier to find. On this link, you can find the IUCr teaching pamphlets, a short description of how to grow crystals, and other crystallography web resources.
Teaching Pamphlet Topics
In this lab experiment, students use sol-gel chemistry to prepare silica gel monoliths from tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS). Carrying out the hydrolysis and condensation under acid-catalyzed vs.
This is an interactive small-group discussion activity I did on the first day of sophomore-level inorganic chemistry to get students to interact with each other and brainstorm to collectively review what they knew about atomic orbitals. I also wanted to "set the stage" for non-lecture type activities in this class. I adapted this in-class activity from one posted by Joanne Stewart (Hope College) with additional questions from a fundamental quiz posted by Barbara Reisner
Theo Gray has compiled some of his Popular Science columns into a beautiful book of sometimes dangerous experiments, many of them with particular relevance to inorganic chemistry! With chapter names like "Experimental Cuisine", "Doomsday DIY", and "Twisted Shop Class", you know you in for a wild ride. Some particularly intriguing experiments include electroplating a copper design on your iPod, making glass and elemental silicon out of sand, making a burning Mg/dry ice sculpture, anodizing Ti for cool color effects, and creating a "hill billy hot tub" using 600 lbs of quicklime.
http://firstyear.chem.usyd.edu.au/calculators/mo_diagrams.shtml
Flash based tools to help with the construction of MO diagrams:
While this site is also a commercial site (selling Theo's periodic tables and book, etc.) it is a wonderful resource of pictures of elements and their compounds, and "real life" uses of elements (such as a gamma ray imaging of the skeleton for Tc, a hard drive for B, and sushi for Hg!). It is also a source of movies of reactions of the elements, including some pretty impressive ones for the alkali metals and the thermite reaction. It also provides easy access to his chemistry column for Popular Science magazine.
This website provides access to many formulations of the periodic table over time. I think that looking at the various representations of the table would provide an excellent way to discuss periodic trends.
This list was compiled by Mark R. Leach and is part of his free resource, The Chemogenesis web book.