The students often ask "why do we learn inorganic and coordination chemistry? what is the relation between the courses we are taking in organic, inorganic, physical, analytical and biochemistry?". Most students feel that these topics are isolated islands and cannot see the joint between them and why the educators have built up their curriculum on the way it is. Part of it lies on us as educators since most instructors give their topic without mentioning the importance of the other courses' topics in their classrooms. In many of the real life industrial organic chemistry,e.g.,"Petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, polymers and agrochemicals as well as in commodity and fine chemicals", metal and organometallics' catalysis play an important rule. From my point of view highlighting this topic for undergraduates is a very important one.

Anyway, whatever your choice will be, it will be a pleasure receiving a copy of your article.

Good luck

Maybe chelate complexes? Beautiful colors + ligand field theory?

Dear Wojciech

Thanks for your suggestion. My field is Organic chemistry and I know a bit about chelate complexes nevertheless inorganic colorful materials (such as florescence materials) is a good idea.

May be nano-particle synthesis like gold and silver they show intense color change.

....Another idea can be Luminescence experiments to emphasis chemical energy.

Nano materials in solar cells

colorful? how about anthocyanins, mechanisms behind color change in different pH environments and their impact in nature. (Floral colors, changes and pollination for eg)

May be supramolecular chemistry . Stereochemistry of host-guest molecule (cyclodextrine their properties ,solubility etc. )

You can work on Continuous Chiral separation of racemic compounds, by crystallization method. It's a totally new & advance thing in the field of research.

i like biomineralisation, there's loads of chemistry, as well as biology, physics and materials science in there. We put lots of stuff in our recent concept paper looking at bioinspired and biomimetic materials for electronics, photonics, optics, photovoltaics and magnetic data storage: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201300721/abstract There are lots of illustrations in there. We also did a highlight article looking at protein and peptide templated nanoparticles last year, that has lots of examples too: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/jm/c2jm31620j#!divAbstract. Much of the motivation behind biotemplated and bioinspired materials is to find greener routes for materials synthesis, I hope that helps.

I suggest you two things.

1. Refer Journal of Education, Resonance, Current Science which usually focus on the topics of interest for Graduate students.

2. The main requirements of the world now are a) Power ii) Food for growing population. I hope you can emphasize on the role of chemistry in the generation of power or electricity. For this also you can find lots of literature. Wish you Good Luck.

The students often ask "why do we learn inorganic and coordination chemistry? what is the relation between the courses we are taking in organic, inorganic, physical, analytical and biochemistry?". Most students feel that these topics are isolated islands and cannot see the joint between them and why the educators have built up their curriculum on the way it is. Part of it lies on us as educators since most instructors give their topic without mentioning the importance of the other courses' topics in their classrooms. In many of the real life industrial organic chemistry,e.g.,"Petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, polymers and agrochemicals as well as in commodity and fine chemicals", metal and organometallics' catalysis play an important rule. From my point of view highlighting this topic for undergraduates is a very important one.

Anyway, whatever your choice will be, it will be a pleasure receiving a copy of your article.

Good luck

1.) Synthesis of common and small organic compounds. (Acetylsalicylic acid from...)

2.) Isolation of known natural products in common plants (Caffeine from...)

3.) Cis-Trans isomerism

4.) Coordination and metal complexes

5.) if possible in your institution, demonstration of electrocyclic reactions

Dear Shima,

I propose a pollutant adsorption, in water phase, on activation carbon, which can be made from a local biomass. You will find some examples of AC synthesis and pollutants adsoprtion in my RG profile. If you do no not have the necessary to prepare activated carbons you can use commercial activated carbons.

Vanessa

How about "click chemistry"? It's a funny name but it describes a powerful strategy for assembly of molecules and materials via reliable reactions that "always work". The key reactions are relatively simple but can be used in many creative ways ranging from drug design to nanotechnology: http://www.organic-chemistry.org/namedreactions/click-chemistry.shtm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistry etc.

I'd suggest going more into enzymatic synthesis. As Adel Amer suggested - this is a place where you can actually try and combine various aspects of chemistry. Try to check the changes of - for example - grapeseed oil when transacylating it on different enzymes with pure acids or with vinyl esters. Or show the resolution of some chiral alcohols via enzymatic transformation. Or - other way - show the changes of enzymatic reaction progres when changing the pH or adding some heavy metal salts. The possibilities are limitless, if you want to work in water - here you go, if in organic solvents - also possible (enzyme promiscuity, another topic to check - how come lipases promote enzyme hydrolysis in water, but allow for alcohol acylation in - for example - hexane), you can do kinetic calculations, analytical measurements - anything. You can teach HPLC and GC with it... there are just too many possibilities to mention them in one post.

What about the apollo 11 and chemistry

that this apparatus analyzes of soils of other planets

What about the historical aspect of ammonia and its historical context during the war

water analysis is quite attractive and easy to conduct.....you can divide your students to groups and each group has to bring water samples from different areas and analyse various parameters (pH, TDS, TSS....etc) or ask them to analyse one parameter and do comparison between their samples

One of the best courses I ever taught for undergraduate non-chemist students was called (Chemistry & Society). It was a university elective. It included the topics(( introduction to basic theoretical& applied chemistry concepts, some contributions of chemistry to society in areas (such as energy & energy alternatives, manufacturing industries, public health, & control of pollution), and some chemical technology successes& challenges )).

A huge number of students (e.g. Fine Arts, Pharmacy, Engineering, Information Technology, Economics...etc.) used to enroll in that course & they liked it very much. Every now & then I meet a student who took the course several years ago & I am told that he/she is still keeping the notebook of that course.

Unfortunately, the administration of the university ordered the (delete) of this course for reasons which I cannot disclose now.

The interesting topic for undergraduatev students is Green Chemistry which involves the protection of the environment.

One of the hot topics in organic chemistry research is what we call Mechanochemistry. That is, the synthesis of organic compounds through grinding. It is a greener method, uses no solvent (solvent free synthesis) and often has much better yield than the conventional reflux methods. It can easily be done at UG level; even postgraduate students may like to do it.

This is kind of old question now. The university has asked you to write an inspirational article on the benifits of learning chemistry.

This totally depends on your expertise area. If you are an inorganic chemist, you can think an interesting area that you are aware with. Since the chemistry is a practical subjects there are enough topics to be discussed in each area.

Probably, you could update the thread now.