At this website, you will find a link to the syllabus and all lecture videos for a "flipped" version of an Advanced Inorganic Chemistry Course taught at Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame, IN). I used Shiver & Atkins for this course, and the format is based off of Dr. Franz's course at Duke. If anyone is interested in the problem sets, I will be happy to share, although much of the material I used is from VIPEr.
In this activity, students in my upper-level Inorganic course are given two possible structures of sulfur dioxide, and based on an assessment of given vibrational modes, they determine which of the modes are IR active by two methods: (1) the “Intro Chem” method (determing whether the dipole moment changes for a particular vibrational mode) and (2) using character tables. They compare their assessment to experimental IR absorption peaks, and the students decide which structure is valid. For those of you who teach Raman spectroscopy, it could be included in this LO as well.
This lab exercise gives students a problem scenario (a mixture of 4 solids) and asks them to determine a way to separate them from each other utilizing experimentation, previous knowledge, and discussion. Students are expected to write a standard operating procedure detailing the method they determine for the separation at the end of the lab. A modified version of this lab was originally performed in an accelerated summer class on chemistry given to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders that were on a track for early entrance into college. The lab was done over the c
This is a website that teaches students about various aspects of pn-junction photovoltaics, from basics about solar illumination, to solid state chemistry, to PV module design. There are numerous animations demonstrating facets of solid-state chemistry and light absorption. Here I will describe how I have used sections 3.1 Basics and 3.2 Generation in Inorganic Chemistry in the context of a specific laboratory application, but the site could have many more uses.
A set of questions to intersperse in lectures OR to use as a means of student guided learning of nomenclature.
This is a shorter version of a previously published Learning Object. This version focuses on bond enthalpy calculations and has students think about the risks and safety precautions for the synthesis of an explosive material (nitrogen triiodide).
There is also a longer version of this activity posted as a literature dicussion.
Students in a 2nd year inorganic class read an article describing the effect of additives on the final morphology of copper oxide. (Siegfried, M.J., and Choi, K-S, “Elucidating the Effect of Additives on the Growth and Stability of Cu2O Surfaces via Shape Transformation of Pre-Grown Crystals”J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128 (32), pp 10356–10357. dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja063574y).
This is a presentation to introduce students to Toulmin’s Argumentation Scheme in the context of providing explanations in Inorganic Chemistry. It was inspired by discussions with Rick Moog at Franklin & Marshall College regarding how to encourage students to fully explain the “why” behind chemical behavior, rather than simply cite trends or equations. These slides were used to prompt a discussion about what a complete, logical explanation should include. They also served as a means of defining what is expected on quizzes and exams in response to various prompts.
Examples taken from the literature for the six palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions used in organic chemistry.
Frustrated by the lack of inorganic textbooks that really fit my materials-oriented first-semester inorganic course, I embarked on a project with my students to create a free online textbook. The students did most of the heavy lifting, and I'm pleased to report that the next class to use the book rather liked it. It is still a work in progress, but I would like to encourage everyone to check it out and edit it if the spirit moves you.