In Haverford College's course Chem 111:Structure and Bonding, we have included a workshop exercise that guides students through their first experience using electronic structure calculations. We use the WebMO interface along with Gaussian03, but the exercise could be adapted for other electronic structure programs. The general structure of the exercise is as follows:
I designed this lab experiment to introduce students to the uses of powder X-ray diffraction in the context of the synthesis of a technologically relevant material. Zinc oxide nanoparticles can be synthesized readily with reagents that are inexpensive and relatively benign with regard to student use and waste disposal. Two experiments described in J. Chem.
I just found this neat little web-based tutorial at the University of Alberta. It goes through UV-Vis, IR and NMR. Its coverage of IR is almost exactly what I expect my students to know. In typical "stretch and release" fashion, I teach more, but if my students could do the practice problems on the website, I'd be happy.
The site was put together by Greg Nilsson, Enrico Fok, June Ng and Jason Cooke of the Department of Chemistry.
There are also has some great problems for multinuclear NMR.
The site has a tutorial, practice problems, and live feedback. Way cool!
This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structures of a series of salts of the [XeF]+ cation. The [MF6]– and [M2F11]– anions (M = As, Sb, Bi) were used as counterions, and in all cases, the [XeF]+ cation interacts with the anion via a weak bond between the Xe and a fluoride of the anion to form an ion-pair in the crystalline solid. These somewhat unusual ions provide an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis stru
This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structure of the carbonyl diazide molecule. This relatively simple molecule provides an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis structures and VSEPR theory to molecular structure, backed up by experimental data on bond distances and bond angles. Before tackling carbonyl diazide, the students warm up by considering the structures of hydrogen azide and the isolated azide ion. The reference to the original paper is
For the past four years, I have required my inorganic students to write short 3-page formal lab reports in the form of communication to the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This exercise has relieved some of the stress on my students who are writing reports of other science classes and simplified my grading. Using Jeffrey Kovac's Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum: An Instructor's Handbook as a starting point, I have developed a rubric to provide qualitative feedback to the stu
This appears to be an excellent introductory text for bioinorganic chemistry. The authors assume no previous biochemistry knowledge and only a cursory understanding of concepts in inorganic chemistry is required. Any student who has completed general chemistry should find most of the book readily accessible.
A really neat interactive periodic table
This presentation provides an inorganic chemist's perspective on metals used to make organ pipes and their corrosion and conservation. The slides highlight my own research in this area as well as work being done by other scientists around the world. The purpose of this learning object is to show students an application of inorganic chemistry that they probably have not encountered before and show an example of how analytical methods of materials chemistry can be used in conservation science.