Nicolai Lehnert's group recently shared this video they made for the Penn State Bioinorganic Workshops on Youtube. This is a great practical demonstration of how MCD data is actually collected.
In this literature discussion, students are asked to read an article describing a series of uranyl halide compounds that contain an alkali counterion that interacts with one or more of the uranium's ligand atoms. This paper stands out as a great example of the binding preferences of acids and bases, and can be explained very well using simple HSAB concepts.
This collection highlights the learning objects used at the 2014 VIPEr workshop on the Bioinorganic Applications of Coordination Chemistry to introduce participants to the field of bioinorganic chemistry. They provide essential background information on how metals bind to proteins as well as the techniques used in the research papers presented at the workshop. A list of learning objects created at the workshop based on the current research of our expert speakers can be found at:
This in class activity is designed to introduce students to how amino acid side chains can coordinate metal ions in proteins. It guides students through the exploration of several metal binding sites in proteins using the Ligand Explorer program on the Protein Data Bank (PDB) website. Essentially, it is a way for them to use the PDB to “discover” the information generally presented on this topic in the introductory chapters of bioinorganic textbooks. At the end it asks students to think about Hard Soft Acid Base theory and to see how that can be applied to the binding of metals in protei
A guided-inquiry activity for the interactive PhET simuation "Molecules and Light" was created to introduce upper-level inorganic laboratory students to inorganic spectroscopy. The activity included here is the first part of a two-day discussion. This activity instructs students to use the PhET simulation "Molecules and Light" to explore how various molecules interact with different energies of electromagnetic radiation (microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet). This activity can also be used in a general chemistry setting as the topics discussed are very basic.
The Sheffield Chemputer is a site that does a variety of calculations including: isotope patterns, element percentages, reaction yields, oxidation states (for transition metal complexes), electron accounting (for metal complexes), VSEPR shape and classification using the CBC method. At the initial point of this post (April 29, 2014) parts of the site are still under development, but it seems to be off to a good start.
This is an in-class activity that I made to help students in my second semester general chemistry course work through some aspects of color and coordination chemistry. The activity was performed with a demonstration of color for nickel coordination complexes (ligands: water, ethylenediamine, and ammonia). I also included equilibria and thermodynamics as those concepts apply to coordination compounds at the introductory level. This served as a review of the concepts as well.
Having been inspired by a number of wonderful LOs, I introduced group theory in my 'sophomore' inorganic class this spring. In addition to learning to determine the point group of a molecule, students were taught how to construct a qualitative MO diagram though the use of LGOs. While a little more than 5 slides, this is what I used in lecture to cover the material.
Having been inspired by a number of wonderful LOs, I introduced group theory in my 'sophomore' inorganic class this spring. In addition to learning to determine the point group of a molecule, students were taught how to construct a qualitative MO diagram though the use of LGOs. While this course can be taken with or without the laboratory component, it seemed only natural to include a lab on this material. A previous lab had introduced the students to computational methods for geometry optimization.
Every day when I teach Inorganic Chemistry (and in most of my problem sets and take home exams) I create Web pages to show 3D images of selected molecules to my students. I am a visual learner and I find the structures beautiful and informative.
In the past few months, you likely have found that web sites scripted with Jmol scripts calling a Jmol applet (which is a Java applet) are blocked.