I ask for help from the VIPEr community again. I have naively agreed to teach a special topics group theory course to two of our departments BS/MS degree students. It is an independant study course that is supposed to cover group theory more indepth than what they would have recieved in their BS coursework.
I have developed over the years an upper level (junior and senior level) materials chemistry course that has become part of our regular curriculum at Williams College. The course has taken many different forms over the years and has evolved over time.
I am excited to report that my department is moving to a two-course inorganic sequence. We have always taught "Advanced Inorganic Chemistry" without an official introductory course. Now we will also have a "foundations" level course. My "problem" is that in this upcoming semester, Fall 2011, the two courses will be cross-listed and the lecture part will meet simultaneously. This is a one-time arrangement; after Fall 2011, the courses will be distinct. We have two populations of students that are enrolled under different graduation requirements, but we cannot staff two courses this year.
Several IONiC members were meeting at Smith College and the topic of rubrics came up. I'm always looking for better ways to evaluate student work. Scott Williams mentioned that he had rubric for grading posters and Adam Johnson said he had one for grading student theses. I have an oral presentation from (that I'm in the process of revising). I was hoping that people would be willing to share their rubrics so that we have good starting places from which to work.
Please consider by sharing your rubrics, your thoughts on developing them, etc.
A Viewpoint article highlighting IONiC and VIPEr has just appeared in Articles ASAP in the journal Inorganic Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/ic2006919)! The goal of the article is to strengthen the connections between cutting-edge research and the undergraduate classroom. We think that IONiC and VIPEr are excellent resources to build these connections and bring the excitement of research into our undergraduate courses.
I find that the periodic tables in general chemistry textbooks are not consistent. In some textbooks, Ce is the first lanthanide and ends with Lu. In other texts, I see that La is the first lanthanide & ends with Yb. I would argue the format should be the former since Lu3+ is a f14 element. I'm sure there are papers on this topic, but it still drives me nuts that elements can be placed in different positions. What are your thoughts?
Dear Colleagues,
I must admit that ChemDraw has improved significantly over the years for drawing inorganic and organometallic structures, but there are still issues. ChemDraw has an option "clean up structure" which works well for "fine tuning" organic molecules, but it doesn't work well for inorganic molecules. Perhaps the issue is program treats the metal ions as if they are "carbon". I am not sure. Has anyone else noticed this?
Sibrina
In reading inorganic teaching materials I've noticed an opposing orbital overlap trend. In the context of covalent solid state materials in the carbon column (all diamond-like structure), as you go down the column orbital overlap is said to decrease due to larger and larger atom size, thus leading to weaker bonding interactions and smaller band gaps. (Carbon is an insulator, silicon and germanium are semiconductors, alpha-tin is a metal.)