Coordination complexes and crystal field theory in-class worksheet

Submitted by Sarah K. St. Angelo / Dickinson College on Mon, 04/28/2014 - 18:39
Description

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.

'Sophomore' symmetry: Lecture materials

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Thu, 03/27/2014 - 10:19
Description

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.

 

'Sophomore' symmetry: Computational analysis

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Tue, 03/25/2014 - 17:34
Description

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.

Viewing Jmol Images and Animations (currently blocked) that call a Jmol Applet

Submitted by Marion Cass / Carleton College on Thu, 03/13/2014 - 22:31
Description

 

    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. 

Orbital Overlap Worksheet

Submitted by Vanessa / Albion College on Tue, 03/04/2014 - 22:43
Description

This exercise was developed to help students predict bonding between s,p and d atomic orbitals.

Molecular Orbital of Transition Metal Complexes

Submitted by Steven Neshyba / University of Puget Sound on Wed, 02/05/2014 - 21:39
Description

Students construct computer models of two transition metal complexes, solve their electronic structures, and inspect the resulting d-type molecular orbitals to identify which are non-bonding, sigma* antibonding, or pi* antibonding. After constructing a molecular orbital diagram, they determine which of the two complexes is likely to absorb light at a longer wavelength.

Electronic Absorption Spectroscopy of Aquated Transition Metal Ions

Submitted by Zachary Tonzetich / University of Texas at San Antonio on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 12:07
Description

I developed this laboratory experiment for our instrumental analysis class. The course is taken by junior and senior chemistry majors, who for the most part have had one inorganic chemistry course and some physical chemistry. The laboratory is operationally very simple and has students record the UV-vis spectra of transition metal sulfate salts in water using volumetric technique. They record the molar absorptivities for each peak and use this data to determine the number of waters of hydration for each salt by comparing with literature absorptivity values.

Solar-Powered Oxidation of Water

Submitted by Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College on Tue, 01/07/2014 - 18:14
Description

Students in a half-credit nanomaterials chemistry course read an article describing the electrochemical deposition of BiVO4 (Kyoung-Shin Choi and Jason A. Seabold, “Efficient and Stable Photo-Oxidation of Water by a Bismuth Vanadate Photoanode Coupled with an Iron Oxyhydroxide Oxygen Evolution Catalyst” J. Am. Chem. Soc.

Five Slides About a Simple powder XRD Analysis

Submitted by Rebecca / The Ohio State University on Sat, 06/29/2013 - 21:28
Description

These slides walk students through a solid state synthesis with a simple powder XRD analysis. This presentation was made to answer the question “How do I know what came out of the furnace?” for a general chemistry audience, assuming very little XRD knowledge. Specifically this shows using XRD with database searching to determine phase purity through pattern matching.

(This does not cover the fundamentals of XRD, please see related links for that.)

 

Brief introduction to local surface plasmons (LSPRs) for nanoparticle color

Submitted by Sarah K. St. Angelo / Dickinson College on Fri, 06/28/2013 - 09:30
Description

This is a very brief introduction to the origin of color in nanoparticle systems.  A link to a video is included in the slides that shows the addition of the reducing agent to the gold precursor solution.  The link is also available as a Web Resourse (below).

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