Lecture #8, Wednesday, April 15, 2009

We are getting into my favorite material of the quarter. I gave a brief overview of the REEL project and described how the research labs would differ from the regular labs. These labs are going to be frustrating at times. There are no clear cut answers to the questions we are trying to answer and instead of simply asking the TA is this right? Or is this wrong? you will have to PROVE to yourself, and to us, why something is right or wrong. You will also have to THINK LIKE A CHEMIST during these labs. You cannot just simply follow a recipe and finish the labs. It will initially be frustrating, but in the enable you to enhance your critical thinking skills and become a better student. These labs kind of remind me of the fall of 2002. It was my first year as a grad student at The Ohio State University and the football team was led by a stingy veteran defense and the offense was sparked by true freshman phenom Maurice Clarett. The Buckeyes got off to a great start found themselves 10-0 entering their November 9th match-up at the Purdue Boilermakers.

I'll never forget watching that game. You want to talk about frustration? How could we not move the ball at all against a lack luster Purdue defense? How could we possibly be in this situation? It's 4th and 2 with 1:44 left in the game and we are down to the Boilermakers 6-3? This is our dream season crashing and burning. This is where if you get worked up and you are nervous and anxious things will work against you. Did Coach Tressel look nervous or anxious when he called in the final play? Did Craig Krenzel get all worked up when he had to step up in the pocket and fire the ball down field? Did Michael Jenkins look nervous when the ball was in the air? The exact opposite happened. Coach Tressel calmly calls in the play, Krenzel drops back, steps up, and fires a bullet to a streaking Michael Jenkins in the end zone. BOOM! Touchdown! Brent Musberger goes crazy! Holy Buckeyes! And my favorite moment of the entire sequence is that Jenkins calmly tosses the ball to the referee like he knew he was going to score a touchdown all along. That is the kind of calmness and confidence I would like you to have during your lab experience. This doesn't just happen in the REEL labs, it happens in lab #25 as well. Calm yourselves down, show a little confidence, and everything will work out fine. If you are still concerned about Exp #25 we can come up with a plan to get you caught up and remember, you will have time at the very end of the course to finish the experiment.

In lecture today I began discussing transition metals. When we look at the physical properties of transition metal complexes IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ELECTRONS! To open up lecture I compared and contrasted transition metal electron configurations and orbital energies for atoms vs. ions. In transition metals, since the valence s and d orbitals are so close together in energy, we observe a dramatic difference between the orbital energy diagrams and electron configurations of atoms vs. ions.

In Chemistry 121 we discussed the electron configurations of atoms. I placed my electron configuration and electronic structure 121 notes on carmen so be sure to look them over if you feel weak in this area. Next, we needed to review the shapes of the orbitals. These are very important because when a coordinate covalent bond is formed in a transition metal complex ion, the d orbitals of the transition metal overlap with the ligand's atomic orbitals, forming the bond. In order to truly visualize the shapes of these orbitals you have to be able to look at them and rotate them in 3-dimensions. We are very fortunate to have a great web site in place that allows you to visualize and rotate the atomic orbitals. For next week's quiz it would be very beneficial to take a look at the link comparing the 3s, 3p, and 3d orbitals. Be sure to pay special attention to how the lobes of the orbitals orient themselves in space because in Friday's lecture we will analyze what happens to the atomic orbitals of the transition metal when they overlap with the atomic orbitals of the ligand to form a molecular orbital. One last thing, remember that orbitals overlap to form bonds to decrease the overall energy of the system, or in other words we want to lower the overall energy of all the electrons. Remember, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ELECTRONS!

I'd like to give a special shout out to one of my former students, Ted Schoenfeldt, who was voted the American Volleyball Coaches Association Division I Men's National Player of the Week. I do have a little bit of beef with the writer of the article as it is no where mentioned that Ted is a chemistry major :( If you have nothing to do on Saturday night at 7 pm, the #11 ranked Ohio State Men's Volleyball team hosts the Penn State Nittany Lions, who claim the distinction of being ranked as the #1 team in the country.

If you are keeping up with the homework problems you should complete the Transition Metal Homework Set #1, which is posted on carmen. It would be beneficial to complete that by Friday's lecture.

I will see you in class on Friday. Talk to you then, Dr. Fus