Inorganic chemists often use IR spectroscopy to evaluate bond order of ligands, and as a means of determining the electronic properties of metal fragments.
This is a nanochemistry lab I developed for my Junior and Senior level Inorganic Chemistry course. I am NOT a nano/matertials person, but I know how important nanochemistry is and I wanted to make something where students could get an interesting introduction to the area. The first time I ran this lab was also the first time I made gold nanoparticles ever!
We do not have any surface/nano instrumentation here (AFM, SEM/TEM, DLS, etc... we can access them at other universities off-campus but that takes time and scheduling), so that was a key limitation in making this lab.
For inorganic lab, I have my students write their lab reports in the style of the journal Inorganic Chemistry. The first week of lab, we spend time in small groups looking at several examples of recent articles from Inorganic Chemistry, focusing mainly on the experimental section and the abstract (as these are included in every lab report). We then come back together as a class to have a discussion of each of the sections in the articles. We discuss what was included in each section, what wasn’t included, and the style, tone, tense, and voice of each section.
This morning before class I was picking on one of my students for having her organic chemistry textbook out on her desk. I believe I said something along the lines of 'how dare you contaminate my classroom with that!' She explained how she had an exam today and I let it drop. That is until later in the class when I was teaching about chelates. I had a sudden inspiration. I asked the student to pick up her organic book with one hand. I then warned her that I was going to smack the book. I did and she dropped it.
Fundamental principles of inorganic chemistry, including: states of matter; modern atomic and bonding theory; mass and energy relationships in chemical reactions; equilibria; acids and bases; descriptive inorganic chemistry; solid state structure; and electrochemistry. Periodic properties of the elements and their compounds are discussed (3 hours lecture, 1 hour recitation).
I present a format for more effective communiction of errors in lab reports to students that I term Errors Checklists. Grading lab reports are one of the banes of our existence as professors. They are endless, unremitting papers that need to be scrutinized for accuracy, precision and understanding.
These five slides are intended to share a visual scaffolding that I developed to help my general chemistry students identify what calculations are needed to solve stoichiometry problems.
For twenty years, I have started my second-year Inorganic Chemistry class with a few PowerPoint slides illustrating the inorganic chemistry that is present in a number of societal areas. The point is to emphasize to the students that inorganic chemistry is present in all aspects of life. To make this process more interactive, I made "game pieces" with a topic on the front (e.g, photography or radiation protection or vitamin B12) and an area on the back (energy, materials, biology, medicine, or environment). As each student enters the class, they are asked to take one game piece.
I do not like to take a large amount of time in class to cover nomenclature of any kind, though I want students to know the names of common ligands and the basic ideas of how coordination complexes are named. Since it is a systematic topic I assign this guided inquiry worksheet. I guess I think about it like learning rules for a new board game, sometimes you just have to play and learn as you go. This assignment is meant to establish teh basica rules for naming by guiding students through what the needs are in naming, then it allows them to identify the convetions from a list of structur
This paper describes the synthesis of a stable compound of sodium and helium at very high pressures. The paper uses computational methods to predict likely compounds with helium, then describe a synthetic protocol to make the thermodynamically favored Na2He compound. The compound has a fluorite structure and is an electride with the delocalization of 2e- into the structure.
This paper would be appropriate after discussion of solid state structures and band theory.
The questions are divided into categories and have a wide range of levels.