Dear Colleagues,

I want to purchase a good model kit for inorganic complexes. Any recommendations? I would love to have a model of tris complexes that contain the ethylenediamine ligand.

Dear Colleagues,

I hope all is well. I had a question about NMR and paramagnetic metal complexes. I understand that paramagnetic metal complexes often goes significant broadening and loss of splitting with NMR peaks. But, what is happening at the molecular level that actually causes the broadening of the peaks? I don't have a good understanding of this concept.

Not to ding Miessler and Tarr, I love the book.  But i'm finding more typos than usual in the 4th ed. Someone suggested I create a forum post to log them to be helpful.  Here are the ones I can think of right now:

problem 12.21 (page 482):  R. L. Rheingold?? should be A. L. Rheingold.

A question for faculty out in VIPEr land, most likely of the solid state variety:

Does anyone teach bond valence sums or bond valence analysis in their inorganic courses?  I have not taught this topic in the past, but I have students reading a paper for class this semester that discusses bond valence analysis and bond valence parameters briefly.  I am looking for some leading references to point them to (juniors and seniors) that would gently introduce them to this topic.  Any suggestions either online or in texts or in the literature?

Every year about this time in the semester when I teach General Chemistry I, I realize that one of the  significant obstacles in chemistry for my students is their ability to read and interpret problems - they get hung up on the translation of words.  I'd really like to find more examples of word problems that don't require specific chemical knowledge but do require this translation (and involve things like unit conversion and percentages). We develop a problem solving method in class, but I feel like working with this sort of problem would be really beneficial.

I was hopeful to seek some input/advice for everyone. 

Dear Colleagues,

I hope all is well. We know that the radii generally decrease with increasing atomic number from La to Lu. However, there are two exceptions to this trend, namely Eu and Yb. Why this exception? Is it an issue of half-filled and filled f subshells? Eu [Xe]6s24f7 and Yb [Xe]6s24f14. What are your thoughts? I know very little about the lanthanides....