In the humanities it is common practice to read a piece of literature and discuss it. This is also practiced in science and is the purpose of this exercise. Each student is assigned a communication from the current literature (inorganic, JACS, organometallics, J. Phys.
This is a worksheet for students to complete in class to practice nomenclature of coordination compounds. It may alternatively be assigned as homework after a lesson on nomenclature. Includes examples of Ewing-Bassett system as well as Stock system.
Students are asked to choose a type of reaction from a set list (included), determine appropriate starting materials and the resulting product and present the reaction as though they accomplished it in the laboratory setting (5 min oral presentation with a 1 page paper). I asked the students to perform both a rough draft presentation (to me) and final draft presentation (to all students in laboratory).
This worksheet was designed to give students an introduction to organic chemistry nomenclature with a more active experience than listening to a faculty member present all the rules for how to name alkanes and cycloalkanes. The pedagogical approach is one introduced to me by Dr. Melonie Teichert; we refer to it as ICC (Inventing through Contrasting Cases). The theoretical framework involves the premise that students will learn and retain more of the learning if they're not simply told the "answer" but if they attempt to generate an answer for themselves based upon a data set.
We do not cover extended solids (solid state materials) in our general chemistry program. With the exception of students who have taken a course in materials science, Inorganic Chemistry I is the first time our students have encountered solid state structure. Although they have built some visualization skills by working with molecules and symmetry, they do not have robust 3D visualization abilities and have trouble using the language of solid state chemistry (unit cells, packing, filling holes, coordination number, etc…) in the context of structure.
Chapter 2 from George Stanley's organometallics course, Lewis Base ligands
this chapter covers halides, oxygen and nitrogen donor ligands
The powerpoint slides contain answers to some of the in-class exercises, so those are behind the "faculty only" wall. I share these with students after the class, but not before.
Everyone is more than welcome to edit the materials to suit their own uses, and I would appreciate being notified of any mistakes that are found.
This LO grew out of my interest in understanding (deeply) the machinery behind the Evans method calculations. I did these calculations as a grad student to characterize my compounds, and I teach it in both my lecture and lab. Currently I use the metal acac synthesis lab to motivate the problem.
After I teach my students about magnetism and magnetic properties in coordination compounds, I spend a day showing how the data is collected and analyzed. I teach them about the Gouy balance, the Evans method of determining magnetism by NMR, and SQUID magnetometry. I also show them real data that I collected as an undergraduate or graduate student, and have them interpret and analyze it.
The only experiment that we can do locally is the Evans method, so I spend more time on this technique. We use the method during the metal acac laboratory.
This literature discussion focuses on a paper from the Angelici lab that examines the heat of protonation of [CpʹIr(PR3)(CO)] compounds. The compounds presented in the paper provide good introductory examples for electron counting in organometallic compounds. The single carbonyl ligand in these compounds provide an excellent probe to monitor the electron richness at the metal center which is impacted by the electron donor ability of the ligands.
Students work in groups to derive the ligand-field diagram for a square-pyramidal vanadium(III) oxo complex using octahedral V(III) as a starting point. The activity helps students to correlate changes in orbital energies as a function of changing ligands and geometry as well as rationalizing why certain geometries can be particularly good (or bad) for particular complexes. The activity also helps students see why oxo complexes of early metals are frequently best described as triple bonds.