In this activity, the provided d orbital splitting patterns need to be matched with ligand geometries. Students are provided with the d orbital splitting diagrams for 6 ligand geometries (octahedral, trigonal bipyramidal, square pyramidal, tetrahedral, square planar, and linear). A web browser is used to view an animation (developed by Flick Coleman) which allows for the visualization of the relationship between the positions of the metal d orbitals and the ligands. Given this information, students should then be able to qualitatively rank the orbitals from highest to lowest energy.

Late in their junior year and into the first two months of their senior year, chemistry majors at Willamette write and submit a research proposal.  Shortly before entering the lab for their thesis work, I lead this activity that takes place in our Senior Projects seminar class.  The class meets one hour per week and we cover topics such as how to write an effective grant proposal, ethics in science, presenting data, etc., as well as this safety activity.

This is a kinesthetic activity in which students must utilize knowledge of the σ-donating, π-donating and π-accepting ability of ligands in order to rank the ligands in the spectrochemical series.  Students are each assigned a ligand on a card.  Suggested ligands are I^-, Br^-, Cl^-, F^-, ONO^-, NO₂^- OH^-, H₂O, pyridine, NH₃, ethylenediamine, bipyridine, phenanthroline, PPh₃, CN^- and CO.  Each student must evaluate the π-accepting, π-donating and σ-donating ability o

In my sophomore level inorganic course, I have experimented with the idea of a living syllabus as a way to develop my own specific learning objectives and to help the students connect the material to the tasks that will be expected of them in assessing their learning.