The Elements: Theo Gray's periodic table website

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 16:47
Description

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.

Periodic Table Formulations

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 10:56
Description

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.

Crystallography (in English) & Evaluating Crystal Structures

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 18:04
Description

The University of Oklahoma has put together a nice website on Crystallography which includes a standard introduction to crystallography & crystal symmetry. I also like some of the features that you don't normally come across including evaluating crystal structures and twinning.

Energy Nuggets: Wise Energy Use – The Challenge of Nitrogen Fixation

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 01:33
Description
This literature discussion activity is one of a series of “Energy Nuggets,” small curricular units designed to illustrate: The Role of Inorganic Chemistry in the Global Challenge for Clean Energy Production, Storage, and Use.

Fourier Transforms and the Phase Problem

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:03
Description

At the end of my inorganic course, I teach several "cool" spectroscopic techniques that inorganic chemists use.  These techniques are discussed within the context of bioinorganic chemistry, and I typically cover EXAFS/XANES, X-ray crystallography, EPR and Mössbauer.  

This website introduces (or reviews) Fourier Transforms in a neat graphical way, but most importantly, illustrates the phase problem.  Given the intensities from your crystal and the phases from your model, the phases are more important!  Which is too bad, as we don't have ready access to that information.

Energy Nuggets: MOF’s for CO2 Sequestration

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 03:50
Description
This literature discussion activity is one of a series of “Energy Nuggets,” small curricular units designed to illustrate: The Role of Inorganic Chemistry in the Global Challenge for Clean Energy Production, Storage, and Use.

Henry Taube and Electron Transfer

Submitted by Brad Wile / Ohio Northern University on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 18:07
Description

When teaching reactions and mechanisms of inorganic complexes, I tend to get to the end of the chapter (out of breath) and find myself thinking "*$#&, I forgot about electron transfer". While I think it is important that students get an understanding of this in an upper level inorganic course, I simply don't have, or forgot to budget the time to really talk about it.

Introduction to X-ray crystallography

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 17:00
Description

At the end of my inorganic course, I teach several "cool" analytical techniques that inorganic chemists use.  These techniques are discussed within the context of bioinorganic chemistry, and I typically cover EXAFS/XANES, X-ray crystallography, EPR and Mössbauer.  I provide this website to the students as supplemental reading material for X-ray crystallography, which is not typically covered in depth in an introductory inorganic text.  The first link is the main website, but I usually only focus on the 2nd and 3rd links which covering the experimental setup for an X-ra

Catalytic cycles and artistry: Chalk Drawing 101

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Wed, 04/15/2009 - 14:19
Description

This is how I always end my organometallics unit in my advanced inorganic chemistry class.  The students have already learned electron counting, the major reaction types (oxidative addition (OA), reductive elimination (RE), 1,1- and 1,2-insertion, β­-hydrogen elimination, and [2+2] cycloadditi­ons), and have gone through naming elementary steps in class for some classic catalytic cycles (hydrogenation with Wilkinson's catalyst and the Monsanto acetic acid process).

Materials Chemistry: UW MRSEC Library of Slide Shows for Class Presentations

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 17:43
Description

The Interdisciplinary Education Group at the University of Wisconsin Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) has a fabulous website with a wide variety of great resources for teaching about materials and the nanoworld at all levels.  A favorite "corner" of this website that I refer to a lot in my own teaching is the library of so-called Resource Slides on a variety of topics.  These Resource Slides are divided up into 36 topical Slide Shows and include wonderful graphics to use in class presentations.   Slide Shows include: