This article presents the featured molecules for the month of March, which appear in the paper by Ozerov, Fafard, and Hoffman, and which are related to the study of the reactions of a number of "piano stool" complexes of ruthenium(II). The synthesis of compound 2a offers students an alternative to the preparation of ferrocene if they are only…

An explanation of various principles of chemistry in a paper by Fanny Ennever by the use of candy is described. The paper explains components of sucrose and the invert sugar that results from the hydrolysis of sucrose and will help students in determining whether the products are indeed hydrates of carbon.

Thalidomide is the molecule of the month for July 2004 in the Journal of Chemical Education. In addition to enantiospecific reactivity, the thalidomide is considered as a good subject for discussion.

A Lattice Energy Spreadsheet by Christopher King, which can help instructors and students to easily calculate crystal lattice energies in many binary compounds, is introduced.

The importance of chemistry in daily life of the students is discussed. The approach provides a connection between the details of molecular structure, bonding and reactivity with many aspects of the impact of chemistry on the society.

This new WebWare combines instructional text and Jmol interactive, animated illustrations that help students visualize the mechanism. It is concluded that by animating the fluxional behavior of a simple model for chiral metal catalyst Sn(amidinate)[subscript 2], in which axial/equatorial exchange within the amidinate rings occurs through a Berry…