This is a truly hands-on activity in which students manipulate paper cutouts of carbon atomic orbitals and oxygen group orbitals to identify combinations with identical symmetry and build the carbon dioxide molecular orbital diagram. The activity pairs well with the treatment of MO theory in Miessler, Fischer, and Tarr, Chapter 5. An optional computational modeling component can be added at the end.
This is an in-class activity I made for my students in a Junior/Senior-level one-quarter inorganic course.
Unfortunately it was waaay too long for the 1.5 h class (i gave them about 45 min). I recommend taking this and adapting it to a take-home exercise or homework set, which is probably what I will do this coming year.
Students used Otterbein to look at various structures, starting with low symmetry, working up to very high symmetry structures. I had them go through the "challenge" so they couldn't see the keys at first, but then go back to check their answers.
In this experiment, students will synthesize and characterize a series of Ru(II) p-cymene piano-stool complexes.
In this activity, a pair of students are show an object or molecule and are asked to determine the point group before their competitor.
Students work in groups to identify relevant steps and intermediates in 3 catalytic cycles, all the while considering bonding (and electron counting) factors. Following assignment of these steps and intermediate species, the students consider several questions related to catalysis more broadly, particularly the role of each reagent, how to speed up or slow down specific steps, and the importance of regiospecificity in certain steps.
In this experiment, students will synthesize and characterize an iron complex followed by completion of two series of catalytic cross-coupling reactions mimicking the methodology utilized by organometallic chemists to balance catalyst efficacy and substrate scope. Initially the complex Fe(acac)3 [acac = acetylacetone] is prepared. Two sets of catalytic reactions are completed: one comparing different iron catalysts (Fe(acac)3, FeCl2, FeCl3) while the other compares substrates (4-chlorotoluene, 4-chlorobenzonitrile, 4-chlorotrifluorotoluene).
In this experiment, students will synthesize and characterize one of three Ag(I) cyanoximate complexes as potential antimicrobial agents for use in dental implants. This experiment combines simple ligand synthesis, metalation and characterization, and a biomedical application. The complexes are both air and light stable.
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) provides many free programs that can be used to view and manipulate crystal structures. Additionally, they have made a subset of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) available for teaching purposes and many educational activities have been created to go along with this teaching subset (see link below). This teaching subset can be freely viewed through the WebCSD interface or can be used in the freely-available Mercury program. (Mercury is avaliable for Mac, Windows, and Linux systems.)
The following is a simple in-class “demonstration” that I use to segue between d to d and charge transfer transitions. After teaching about d to d transitions and Tanabe-Sugano Diagrams, I show my students three solutions that I have put in large test tubes before class. The three solutions I place in the test tubes are:
a. 10 ml of 0.1M Co(H2O)62+
b. 10 ml of 0.1M Cu(H2O)62+
c. 10 ml of a freshly prepared 0.1 M KMnO4 solution
A set of questions to be used in General or Introductory Inorganic Chemistry as a review or “quiz” of shapes and polarities.