Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 12:31
My Notes
Description

This is one of a collection of learning objects developed to honor the 2021 ACS Award Winners in inorganic chemistry.  Marinella Mazzanti from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology was awarded the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry for her outstanding accomplishments in uranium and lanthanide chemistry, including the stabilization of unusual oxidation states and multimetallic cluster synthesis and small-molecule activation. In this paper photoredox chemistry is used to synthesize a uranium (VI) nitride.

This LO is part of a special VIPEr collection honoring the 2021 ACS National Award recipients in the field of inorganic chemistry. Marinella Mazzanti was the recipient of the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry for her outstanding accomplishments in uranium and lanthanides spanning the stabilization of unusual oxidation states to multimetallic cluster synthesis and small-molecule activation.

 

Attachment Size
Mazzanti Award_1.docx 25.8 KB
Learning Goals

Students will:

  • Gain an understanding of why and how chemists work with actinides
  • Translate chemical nomenclature and descriptions into chemical structures
  • Assign/justify oxidation states of the metal ions in complicated coordination complexes
  • Apply simple bonding theories to understand what is happening in more complex reactions
  • Relate bonding information to vibrational spectroscopy and reactivity
  • Analyze Materials and Methods section to understand what would be necessary to repeat a synthesis.
Implementation Notes

I would use this near the end of my junior/senior level course as one of the capstone literature exercises to apply the concepts they learned during the semester and to experience what it is like to read the primary literature.  Students would be given the article one week before we discuss it in class.  Links, hard copies, or pdf files of both the article and supplementary material would be provided (or I might make them find it themselves!).   There are probably more questions here than would be ideal for a single class period discussion.  People who use it could delete less relevant questions for their own classes or stretch the conversation out over two class periods. 

 

Time Required
1 class period (with the assignment distributed 1 week in advance)
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

There are multiple ways to evaluate the student answers to these questions.   I prefer having the students answer the questions for homework (perhaps splitting up the questions or having them complete them in groups), and submitting them electronically before class and then discuss the answers in class.  I sometimes offer the chance to revise and submit answers after the discussion.   Since I haven’t yet done this exercise in class, I will report what I do when I am able to do it.

Evaluation Results

I have not yet used this in the classroom, but I will update it when I do.

Creative Commons License
Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike CC BY-NC-SA