Build-Your-Own Molecular Orbitals
Description
This is a truly hands-on activity in which students manipulate paper cutouts of carbon atomic orbitals and oxygen group orbitals to identify combinations with identical symmetry and build the carbon dioxide molecular orbital diagram. The activity pairs well with the treatment of MO theory in Miessler, Fischer, and Tarr, Chapter 5. An optional computational modeling component can be added at the end.
Otterbein Symmetry In-Class Activity/Take home activity
Description
This is an in-class activity I made for my students in a Junior/Senior-level one-quarter inorganic course.
Unfortunately it was waaay too long for the 1.5 h class (i gave them about 45 min). I recommend taking this and adapting it to a take-home exercise or homework set, which is probably what I will do this coming year.
Students used Otterbein to look at various structures, starting with low symmetry, working up to very high symmetry structures. I had them go through the "challenge" so they couldn't see the keys at first, but then go back to check their answers.
Synthesis and Characterization of a Series of Organometallic Ru(II) Complexes with Fluorinated Phosphine and Phosphite Ligands
Description
In this experiment, students will synthesize and characterize a series of Ru(II) p-cymene piano-stool complexes.
Point Group Battles Activity
Description
In this activity, a pair of students are show an object or molecule and are asked to determine the point group before their competitor.
Annotated List of Metal-Containing Structures in the Cambridge Structural Database Teaching Subset
Description
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) provides many free programs that can be used to view and manipulate crystal structures. Additionally, they have made a subset of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) available for teaching purposes and many educational activities have been created to go along with this teaching subset (see link below). This teaching subset can be freely viewed through the WebCSD interface or can be used in the freely-available Mercury program. (Mercury is avaliable for Mac, Windows, and Linux systems.)
Shape & Polarity Review with Clickers
Description
A set of questions to be used in General or Introductory Inorganic Chemistry as a review or “quiz” of shapes and polarities.
How to Determine the Irreducible Representation of a MO
Description
Five slides about how to systematically determine the irreducible representation if provided an unlabeled SALC. These slides focus on molecular orbitals, but this tool can be extended to any kind of SALC.
Advanced Inorganic Chemistry Course Videos
Description
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.
Vibrational Modes and IR Spectra using Character Tables
Description
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.