Cool first day activities?

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 20:42
Hi everyone, I was wondering what kinds of interesting ways that people kick off the school year/ set the tone for the semester with their students (upper or lower division)? With my lower level students, I've sometimes taken a recent article from a newspaper (an article about a local magnesium fire or the polonium poisoning that happened a couple of years ago, come to mind as examples) and had students come up with 10 inorganic chemistry questions based on the article, to emphasize the importance of asking the right kinds of questions in the class.
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Scientist code of ethics

Submitted by Tim Herzog / Weber State University on Wed, 08/13/2008 - 15:58

I am working on a syllabus for an upper division lab and thought that it would be great to have my students sign some sort of a scientific honor statement in order to try to foster an atmosphere of honesty in data collection and reporting.  Has anybody done this or something similar?  Was it successful?  Does anybody have a good one?  Of course I would reference you:) 

Thanks,

Tim

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Bioinorganic chemistry in sophomore level courses

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Sun, 07/20/2008 - 21:31
As I've stated in another post, we have this odd first semester course that is a hybrid between a sophomore descriptive inorganic chemistry course and general chemistry. Since this course is the ONLY inorganic course that our biochemistry majors are exposed to, I want to give them a flavor of why inorganic chemistry is important to their field. Some of the topics that I have typically taught with bioinorganic applications include: acidity of metal ions and bioavailability, HSAB, types of ligands and the chelate effect, and hemoglobin as a case study in coordination chemistry. I've sometimes done some redox applications as well. Anyone have any particularly fun bioinorganic chemistry applications that are accessible to approximately a sophomore level course (perhaps with an appropriate article for the students to read)? --Hilary
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General chemistry

Submitted by Bunzli Jean-Claude / Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 05:33

Hello everybody,

I'd like to draw your attention to our website

http://chimge.epfl.ch

onto which we uploaded the general chemistry course given to first year students in biology and medicine. The course is not totally completed (Analytical chemistry lacks its last chapter) but is multilingual with French English (direct access: http://chimge.epfl.ch/Index_en.html) and German presently available. Any comment is welcome!

Jean-Claude

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Teaching inorganic with papers from the literature

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 15:13

I really like the idea of teaching inorganic with papers from the literature.  I've never done it because I've never been sure how best to do this.  (I know, I'm a scientist, I should experiment!)  I'd really be interested in hearing about tips (things to do, things to avoid), ways to structure class, important things to look for in a discussion paper, suggestions for leading an effective discussion section, etc... from people who have taught class with lit papers.  I'm curious about  ways to do things and different models that exist.

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Opinions on Supplementary Material and/or good textbook for sophomore topics in first-year class

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Sun, 06/22/2008 - 07:04
Hello all, I have started thinking about the fall semester (!) already and I'd like some advice. We teach a weird hybrid of general chemistry and sophomore organic at the introductory level. So the students are exposed in more depth to d-block chemistry (crystal field), quantum theory (including radial probability diagrams), periodic properties (including Zeff and the lanthanide contraction), and things like acidity of metal ions and HSAB.
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