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.
Polarizing Power of Cations
Description
This is a handout which I use in an advanced general chemistry course, but which could be used in an inorganic course as well. It is a mini-periodic table with common cations and their charge to size ratios expressed as Q/r2, where Q is in integer charges (+1, +2), and r is in Angstroms. Conveniently, Na+ is an easy to remember 1.0, and Al3+ and Be2+ are easy to remember values of 10. This corresponds to the polarizing power of these ions, and is a crude proxy for how covalent their interactions with a given anion tend to be.
Citing and Finding Chemical Literature Library Activity
Description
This assignment will orient new students to searching and finding chemical literature and effectively citing said literature. The library session focuses on the semantics of the ACS style, overviews appropriate indexing/searching tools, and has students search and find two citations for a future lab assignment for their chemistry class.
How to Use Delicious Bookmarking on the Web
Description
Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that retains bookmarks on the web. Users can access their bookmarks from any computer, and Delicious allows for the tagging of bookmarks with relevant descriptors for follow up, searching, and collaborative work.
Contemporary Inorganic Chemists
Description
This is an assignment I use to give students a sense of what kinds of problems real life, contemporary inorganic chemists work on. I start out by having them find 2 contemporary inorganic chemists. They give a 15-20 min presentation on their two chemists that gives a general overview of their research projects. Once everyone has done their general presentation, I have students choose a specific journal article by one of their chemists to present in class. I usually have this assignment run throughout the semester, with the general presentations taking place in the first half of the semeste
Inorganic Chemistry Just Makes You Want to Sing!
Description
Here is a fun way to learn about inorganic chemistry! These songs were composed and passed along to me by Tom Mallouk at Penn State with his permission to post here on VIPEr. I Can't Get No Bragg Diffraction was a joint effort put together one year at a Gordon Research Conference on Solid State Chemistry. Sorry, no recording! The tune n-doped, recorded by the Band Edges, covers the electronic structure behind semiconductor devices. Download the lyrics for both and the mp3 file for n-doped! There is a
Assessing Chemical Hazards
Description
This is a short activity I developed to help my students interpret Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). Students rank unknown compounds from least safe to most safe, and the compounds' identities are revealed. The class discusses other factors to consider in evaluating the safety of an experiment. The "MSDS activity" word document contains a more full description.