Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home--But Probably Shouldn't

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 16:18
Description

Theo Gray has compiled some of his Popular Science columns into a beautiful book of sometimes dangerous experiments, many of them with particular relevance to inorganic chemistry! With chapter names like "Experimental Cuisine", "Doomsday DIY", and "Twisted Shop Class", you know you in for a wild ride. Some particularly intriguing experiments include electroplating a copper design on your iPod, making glass and elemental silicon out of sand, making a burning Mg/dry ice sculpture, anodizing Ti for cool color effects, and creating a "hill billy hot tub" using 600 lbs of quicklime.

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.

Coordination Chemistry Nomenclature

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 22:19
Description

I usually do not take time in my inorganic course to teach students about how to name coordination complexes. And yet, I would like them to know nomenclature to the extent that they can correctly name various complexes in their lab reports or understand the naming conventions used in the literature. Often, there is a section in their textbook that I can refer them to. However, this year, I am using Housecroft and Sharpe, and I could not find the appropriate sections in the text. So, I found some online resources to refer my students to.

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:

Elements on Encyclopedia of the Earth

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 01:32
Description

This is a resource that focuses on the elements from a geological perspective. What I like about the website is that it provides examples of the uses and sources of elements.

Open-ended Recrystallization Addition to the Traditional M(acac)3 Laboratory

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 10:14
Description

In this open-ended activity, students design crystallizations to can see who can grow the biggest crystals of their colorful products. This addition is something that I add to the standard M(acac)3 syntheses that many of us do as an introductory lab in an upper level course or as a final lab in an introductory type course. Syntheses of the M(acac)3 starting materials are available in most published inorganic laboratory manuals.

WebElements

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Wed, 03/11/2009 - 18:53
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.

Literature Searching: Understanding Handbooks

Submitted by Meris / James Madison University on Mon, 03/09/2009 - 09:44
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.

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