This is a beginning-of-semester "warm up." The goals are to help students reconnect to their prior knowledge about atomic orbitals and to introduce and practice the fundamentals of good small group work.
Students construct models of ionic solids in class and answer a series of questions about the structures.
The students write a 2-page chemistry autobiography at the beginning of the semester in order to reflect on their previous chemistry learning experiences, express their expectations for the class, and help me get to know them.
This communication describes the first example of a discrete tetrahedral tellurate ion, analogous to sulfate and selenate. This assignment was used as an introduction to the inorganic literature early in the semester. Pre-discussion questions were adapted from the "How to Read an Inorganic Paper" learning object by Hilary Eppley. In class discussion focused on communications vs. full papers, the essentials of X-ray crystallographic information, multinuclear NMR, and the periodic trends discussed in this paper.
This recent article discusses a series of isostructural complexes across the lanthanides using a multidentate ligand. In these structures, the lanthanides are all eight-coordinate, bonded to all oxygen donors. Copious structural data is presented that provides excellent experimental verification of the lanthanide contraction.
This is a list of Nobel Prizes that in my opinion were either in Inorganic Chemistry or in an area that has impacted Inorganic Chemistry. I pass this out to students on the first day of class when we are talking very generally about what inorganic chemistry is all about. This could be extended into a longer discussion at this point or at a later point on one or more of the prizes. For example, later in the semester I have them read the Nobel Prize address of Alfred Werner. This helps to inform their lab work and introduces coordination chemistry, which we have not yet discussed in lectu
This is an Excel spreadsheet that contains the radial factors of the H-atom wavefunctions for the 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 3d, and 4s orbitals as a function of multiples of the Bohr radius. Plots are also included of the radial factors (R) vs. r and the radial probability distribution (4πr2R2) vs. r. These can be used during lecture to illustrate to students how these plots change for each type of orbital, or for different principal quantum numbers, or for changing effective nuclear charge.
This is an assignment designed to help students begin to reflect on professional ethics of scientific practice. I have used this in a freshman and a senior seminar after 2-3 days of discussion of what professional ethics is and how one goes about choosing a course of action in an ethical dilemma. I use: