The Guided Tour of Metalloproteins
Description
Bob Morris of the University of Toronto created this website when he was teaching a class on Bioinorganic Chemistry.
Online Courses Directory
Description
This website is a free and comprehensive resource that is a collection of open college courses that spans videos, audio lectures, and notes given by professors at a variety of universities. The website is designed to be friendly and designed to be easily accessed on any mobile device.
So Much Nitrogen: Maggie's Explosive Main Group Compounds
Maggie Geselbracht has a great fondness for compounds with too many nitrogen atoms next to each other. This is a collection of problem sets and class activites based on the structure, bonding, and spectroscopy of a number of such compounds, drawn from the recent literature.
Metal-Ligand Multiple Bonds and Frustrated Lewis Pairs
Description
This is a literature-based activity that focuses on a review I recently published as part of a thematic series on C-H activation.
The review highlights similarities between the newly discovered frustrated Lewis pairs and polarized metal-ligand multiple bonds. There are many ways to use the review, but the attached set of questions focuses on drawing analogies among seemingly diverse types of reactivity using frontier-molecular-orbital considerations.
Atomic Orbital Display
Description
This is a jmol display of the atomic orbitals from 1s to 4f that can be rotated in space. They are plotted relative to the x, y, and z-axes.
The Lewis Dot Structure(s) of Nitryl Fluoride
Description
This is the In Class Activity that I use to review the concepts of Lewis Dot Structures, LDS, (connectivity, resonance, formal charges, etc.) learned in General Chemistry and to introduce new ideas of resonance contributions to the character of the molecule. The question itself is apparently very simple, but the discussion that it produces can be quite rich and brings in both new and old ideas of LDS, providing both a good review and a good segue into advanced ideas of Lewis Dot Structures.
Exploration of Nitrosyl Complexes
Description
This in-class activity and the related problem set allows students to discover the linear and bent bonding modes of NO to metals based on VSEPR theory through guided inquiry. Two examples follow which illustrate how the electrons are counted in NO complexes depending on the coordination mode/formal charge of NO. Students must have had prior practice in counting electrons of complexes to complete the problems.
Soluble Methane Monooxgenase Spectroscopy
Description
Determining the reactive intermediates in metalloenzymes is a very involved task, and requires drawing from many different spectroscopies and physical methods. The facile activation and oxidation of methane to produce methanol is one of the "holy grails" of inorganic chemistry. Strategies exist within materials science and organometallic chemistry to activate methane, but using the enzyme methane monooxygenase, nature is able to carry out this difficult reaction at ambient temperatures and pressures (and in water, too!).
Exploring the Nanoworld Innovating through Materials from the University of Wisconsin Madison
Description
This is a great web resource for all types of nano materials. There are lesson plans, demos, activites, labs and lots of background information. It is very easy to navigate and there are videos of the labs so you can see each step - very useful when doing a type of synthesis or technique new to you.
ChemTube3D
Description
ChemTube3D is a website maintained by the University of Liverpool that has interactive 3D animations ans structures. The content is broken up into several areas:
- A Level;
- Organic Reactions;
- Structure and Bonding;
- Polymers;
- Solid State.
There is a lot of information on the site, and the information could be used in many courses. The areas that I find most useful in my sophomore-level inorganic chemistry course.