WebElements
Description
This is my all time favorite resource for finding out basic information about the elements. I love it. And all of my students do too.
How molecular orbitals change as atomic energy levels shift
Description
Over the years I have developed a number of interactive tools that I use in my classes. This is a tool that seems appropriate for VIPEr. Comments are always appreciated, and I am always interested in developing new tools if there is something you might find useful.
This tool allows you to look at how molecular orbitals change as the difference in electronegativities of the parent atomic orbitals increases.
Inorganic Challenges
Description
The Interactive Inorganic Challenge Forum is a resource for inorganic chemistry teachers who want to incorporate team learning questions (“Challenges”) into an upper level undergraduate inorganic course. Through this site, teachers can exchange their ideas with others who have used inorganic chemistry Challenges. As a result, students benefit from field-tested group questions.
Literature Searching: Bibliography in-class Assignment
Description
This in-class exercise prepares students for the homework Literature Searching: Bibliography Assignment. It allows them to practice the skills needed for that assignment while in class.
Literature Searching: Understanding Handbooks
Description
To allow students to become familiar with the structure of chemical literature and provide them with an understanding of several types of basic handbooks.
Interactive Spreadsheets for Inorganic Chemistry
Description
This web site contains a number of interactive spreadsheets, most of which are applicable to inorganic chemistry (or a physical chemistry class that uses inorganic examples). Here's the list of the most relevant for most inorganic classes:
ABC kinetics - interactively plot concentration versus reaction extent for A, B and C in A -> B -> C by varying k values
Group 10 and 11 Metal Boratranes (Ni, Pd, Pt, CuCl, AgCl, AuCl, and Au+) Derived from a Triphosphine-Borane
Description
This is a guided set of questions for the paper: Group 10 and 11 Metal Boratranes (Ni, Pd, Pt, CuCl, AgCl,
AuCl, and Au+) Derived from a Triphosphine-Borane. It was used to help students integrate the study of a variety of techniques (for example NMR, X-ray, computational studies) and basic organometallic chemistry into reading a "real" paper.
AuCl, and Au+) Derived from a Triphosphine-Borane. It was used to help students integrate the study of a variety of techniques (for example NMR, X-ray, computational studies) and basic organometallic chemistry into reading a "real" paper.
Using Computational Chemistry to discuss backbonding to CO
Description
This activity uses Gaussian with the WebMO interface to investigate the role of the metal in backbonding to CO as well as effects of the trans ligands. It can also be used as a way of introducing computational chemistry in an inorganic course.
Basics of Computational Chemistry
Description
I would use this VERY brief introduction to computational chemistry in my inorganic course to preface a computational based assignment. While one learning goal for such an assignment might be familiarity with WebMO/Gaussian, understanding the background and theory of computational chemistry would generally be beyond the scope of the inorganic course. However, I certainly want students to have some idea of what they are doing when they perform a calculation (optimization and frequency analysis of metal carbonyls, for example). I've also included here handouts I use to explain how to use W
Ligand Substitution Kinetics Worksheet
Description
This worksheet gives students practice with deriving and analyzing the rate laws for two step mechanisms. It's a good review of steady-state kinetics, the assumptions one makes in deriving rate laws, and rate determining steps (and how these last affect the rate law). It finishes by connecting these ligand substitution kinetics to Michaelis-Menton kinetics to show that "it's all the same math, we just change the form".