Siderophore Building: In class Exercise

Submitted by Sheila Smith / University of Michigan- Dearborn on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 21:25
Description
This is an in-class exercise (brainstorming) designed to lead the student through the design of a siderophore (or "iron lover") by applying his knowledge of Lewis acid- base chemistry (specifically HSAB theory), geometry and entropy. This is a good start for a discussion of iron transport and storage in the bioinorganic section of Inorganic II (transition metals). I also use it in my junior level descriptive course when we discuss coordination chemistry.

Coordination chemistry via Inorganic Chemistry ASAP

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 11:23
Description
This in-class activity is a fun way to show students how to apply basic concepts of coordination chemistry to complicated systems that appear in a recent issue of Inorganic Chemistry. After quickly reviewing types of ligands (monodentate, chelating, bridging), how we assign charge to ligands and metals in complexes, and the idea of coordination number, I took my class through a number of "real world" examples from the latest ASAP edition of Inorganic Chemistry.

Energy Nuggets: Wise Energy Use – The Challenge of Nitrogen Fixation

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 01:33
Description
This literature discussion activity is one of a series of “Energy Nuggets,” small curricular units designed to illustrate: The Role of Inorganic Chemistry in the Global Challenge for Clean Energy Production, Storage, and Use.

Fourier Transforms and the Phase Problem

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:03
Description

At the end of my inorganic course, I teach several "cool" spectroscopic techniques that inorganic chemists use.  These techniques are discussed within the context of bioinorganic chemistry, and I typically cover EXAFS/XANES, X-ray crystallography, EPR and Mössbauer.  

This website introduces (or reviews) Fourier Transforms in a neat graphical way, but most importantly, illustrates the phase problem.  Given the intensities from your crystal and the phases from your model, the phases are more important!  Which is too bad, as we don't have ready access to that information.

Coordination Chemistry Nomenclature

Submitted by Maggie Geselbracht / Reed College on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 22:19
Description

I usually do not take time in my inorganic course to teach students about how to name coordination complexes. And yet, I would like them to know nomenclature to the extent that they can correctly name various complexes in their lab reports or understand the naming conventions used in the literature. Often, there is a section in their textbook that I can refer them to. However, this year, I am using Housecroft and Sharpe, and I could not find the appropriate sections in the text. So, I found some online resources to refer my students to.

Open-ended Recrystallization Addition to the Traditional M(acac)3 Laboratory

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 10:14
Description

In this open-ended activity, students design crystallizations to can see who can grow the biggest crystals of their colorful products. This addition is something that I add to the standard M(acac)3 syntheses that many of us do as an introductory lab in an upper level course or as a final lab in an introductory type course. Syntheses of the M(acac)3 starting materials are available in most published inorganic laboratory manuals.

Inorganic Challenges

Submitted by Patrick Holland / Yale University on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 15:39
Description

The Interactive Inorganic Challenge Forum is a resource for inorganic chemistry teachers who want to incorporate team learning questions (“Challenges”) into an upper level undergraduate inorganic course. Through this site, teachers can exchange their ideas with others who have used inorganic chemistry Challenges. As a result, students benefit from field-tested group questions.

Interactive Spreadsheets for Inorganic Chemistry

Submitted by Lori Watson / Earlham College on Sun, 03/08/2009 - 15:28
Description

This web site contains a number of interactive spreadsheets, most of which are applicable to inorganic chemistry (or a physical chemistry class that uses inorganic examples).  Here's the list of the most relevant for most inorganic classes:

 

ABC kinetics - interactively plot concentration versus reaction extent for A, B and C in A -> B -> C by varying k values

Ligand Substitution Kinetics Worksheet

Submitted by Nancy Williams / Scripps College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 12:23
Description

This worksheet gives students practice with deriving and analyzing the rate laws for two step mechanisms. It's a good review of steady-state kinetics, the assumptions one makes in deriving rate laws, and rate determining steps (and how these last affect the rate law). It finishes by connecting these ligand substitution kinetics to Michaelis-Menton kinetics to show that "it's all the same math, we just change the form". 

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