This in-class activity was designed for a Chemical Communications course with second-year students. It is the second part of a two-week segment in which students learn how to use ChemDraw (or similar drawing software to create digital drawings of molecules).
This course is composed of two components:
A. Lecture:
This in-class group activity extends my original post by providing more examples of varying difficulty for students to assign MLXZ classifications and electron counts to organometallic complexes. The answers to these are unambiguous within the CBC system, but they provide excellent starting points for conversation with students about bonding formalisms with organometallics.
This set of slides was made for my Organometallics class based on questions about bridging hydrides and specifically the chromium molecule. I decided to make these slides to answer the questions, and do a DFT calc to show the MO's involved in bonding of the hydride.
This course is an introduction to the field of inorganic chemistry. The student is expected to be well-versed in the material covered in general chemistry, as this will serve as the foundation and launching point for the material to be covered this semester. The course will begin by examining the properties of the elements, and expand outward to consider chemical bonding and the electronic factors that govern metal reactivity. These factors include acid-base theory, thermodynamics, electrochemistry and redox, and coordination chemistry.
A study of the chemistry of inorganic compounds, including the principles of covalent and ionic bonding, symmetry, periodic properties, metallic bonding, acid-base theories, coordination chemistry, inorganic reaction mechanisms, and selected topics in descriptive inorganic chemistry. Laboratory work is required.
This course is designed to give an introduction to the concepts of electronic structure, bonding,
and reactivity in inorganic chemistry. The field is too vast to comprehensively cover every aspect in
a single semester, so this class will offer a qualitative overview of inorganic chemistry. Reading and
understanding scientific literature is an important skill for any scientist to have, whether you move
on to grad school, professional school, or the job market, so relevant literature articles will be
What is a foundations inorganic course? Here is a great description
This is a basic introduction to Enemark-Feltham that can be used in conjunction with any literature that has Iron nitrosyls in it. I made this as a follow up to the work that came ouf of the 2018 VIPEr workshop in UM-Dearborn.
The application of physio-chemical principles to understanding structure and reactivity in main group and transition elements. Valence Bond, Crystal Field, VSEPR, and LCAO-MO will be applied to describe the bonding in coordination compounds. Organometallic and bio-inorganic chemistry will be treated, as will boranes, cluster and ring systems, and inorganic polymers. The laboratory will involve both synthetic and analytic techniques and interpretation of results.