CM3111 — Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry
Academic Year 25/26 - Semester 2
Lecturer: Dr. Stephen Chui
No. of responses: 8
REVIEWS
What advice would you give to someone considering taking this course?
Anonymous: lectures are recorded, Dr Chui is v patient and nice
Anonymous: Knowledge from CM1102 taught under Assoc Prof Adrian Michael LEE would be beneficial in the first few parts of this mod, about symmetry and point groups. I overloaded with this course, you can definitely overload if the assessment structure remains the same with just 2 CAs and 1 final. Content may be a bit difficult to self-learn at times but Dr Chui is extremely friendly and open to consultation, which are very useful.
George: Under Dr Chui, the topics are:
1. Symmetry and point groups
2. Solid State Chemistry
3. Coordination Chemistry
4. Spectroscopy of Coordination Compounds
5. Organometallic Chemistry
His lectures were recorded, and his lecture slides can be found on CSS's Chemistry Courses Resources Telegram group. The lecture tests were closed-book, 1-hour tests. The final exam allowed 1 double-sided A4 sheet. The questions for the lecture tests and finals are not challenging, but extremely tedious and don't contain many marks (ie: there are very many questions you need to complete under time pressure). More than half of the assessment questions are iterations of those from his tutorials and lecture slides. Therefore, grading for Dr Chui's rendition of CM3111 is similar to JC, differentiating primarily based on speed and familiarity with practice/tutorial questions rather than applications towards novel scenarios. Training an AI on the practice/tutorial questions and grinding on them is therefore very beneficial.
DolleEicir: Just be prepared to be consistent with lectures and tutorials, as there is quite a bit of content to go through. 4 major sections: Symmetry and Point Groups (SPG), Solid State Chemistry (SSC), Coordination Chemistry (CC, split into CC1 and CC2; main bulk of the course) and Organometallic Chemistry (OMC). CAs were not in the typical weeks like mid-sem (Wk. 6) or end-sem (Wk. 13); CA1 was in Wk. 4 and CA2 in Wk. 9, so do keep them in mind and prepare in advance. Concepts in earlier lectures will be revisited and built upon in subsequent lectures, so do your best to retain them.
What did you enjoy or find most useful from this course?
Anonymous: Lectures and tutorials are engaging
Anonymous: Dr Chui is extremely approachable and helpful, he does his best to make both lectures and tutorials engaging. I benefitted greatly from attending tutorials in person as I feel his tutorial questions were very relevant to his CAs and finals. He also does a good job of illustrating concepts through his tutorial questions, which slowly increase in difficulty.
George: Dr Chui is an extremely approachable lecturer and frequently stays back after lectures and tutorials to help students with any queries. His lectures also include in-lecture practice questions and a 'contents' slide, which is helpful for students to assess their understanding. His tutorials were also very beneficial, going into more depth to explain certain descriptive elements of the course content.
DolleEicir: Information from this course is definitely useful and relevant in further inorganic courses (CM3212, CM4215) as well as other materials/ polymer courses that use or contain transition metals (TM) as complexes. There is also relevance to organic courses that place emphasis on the use of TMs for synthesis like cross-coupling and olefin metathesis (CM3121), as well as catalysis (CM4228, CM5225; asymmetry in CM5225 linking to SPG). Dr Chui also includes In-Class Questions to work through and test our understanding of the lecture content that is taught in the same lecture for every lecture. He also provides Further Info for your reference, should you wish to read further. Hard to dislike the course because Dr Chui is really nice and helpful, and he teaches well.
What aspects of the course did you find most challenging, and why?
Anonymous: The content can be quite challenging
Anonymous: Concepts such as Coordination Chemistry have a steeper learning curve, but overall it is mostly just the high amount of qualitative explanation that you have to understand in great detail that makes this course challenging.
George: Dr Chui's version of CM3111 disproportionately focuses on breadth over depth: Contents are extremely descriptive, and little emphasis is placed on explanations. While Dr Chui is happy to discuss with students the underlying principles behind certain descriptive content (eg: why organometallic complexes generally obey the 18-electron rule - FYI, it's not because 18 is the number of s+p+d electrons; otherwise, that logic would apply to all coordination complexes), students need to take the initiative to consult him or do further research/reading. Comprehension of the underlying mechanism/reasoning is not rewarded either, as his assessments are extremely descriptive, testing for descriptive content rather than explanations. The majority of them involve lifting descriptions from the slides or listing items (eg: in his closed-book CA, he opted to test students' memory and ability to reproduce the spectrochemical series, instead of asking them to explain why the ordering of ligands was as such). The descriptive nature of the contents and assessments, therefore, makes CM3111 intellectually shallow and content-heavy, as memory is emphasised over mechanistic understanding. While it is still possible to do well for the course without brute-force memorisation and regurgitation (ie: by going in depth to understand the underlying principles of every concept, instead of simply committing it to memory), the sheer volume of content makes this an extremely time-consuming endeavour.
The nature of the assessments does not facilitate such an endeavour as well, as naturally, it would be faster to simply recall, for example, that σ donor ligands in octahedral complexes are LUMO raising, π donor ligands are HOMO raising, and π acceptor ligands are HOMO lowering, compared to deriving it on the spot during exams. To derive this, one needs to first consult the character table (which is fortunately provided) for Oₕ and determine that the HOMO is the t2g set and the LUMO is the eg set. They would then need to construct a reducible representation for the ligand group orbitals and then reduce it into irreducible representations of Oₕ. The σ ligand orbitals reduce to a1g+eg+t1u and the π ligand orbitals to t1g+t2g+t1u+t2u. They would then need to construct an MO diagram to finally determine whether the new HOMO and LUMO are bonding (decrease in energy), antibonding (increase in energy) or non-bonding orbitals (unchanged), based on orbital symmetry labels and occupancy. All this just to get half a mark for writing 'increase', 'decrease', and 'remains unchanged' is hardly worth the time and effort, and is only one of the many examples of the apparent memorisation required in Dr Chui's version of CM3111. Future course coordinators may change this, for example, by incorporating complexes of different point groups, making the brute-force memorisation route less feasible and the conceptual understanding path more rewarding.
DolleEicir: It can get a bit overbearing in terms of the content, but fortunately exams had a double-sided A4 cheatsheet that can be used for reference; the 2 CAs were closed book.
What resources did you find most helpful in helping you better understand the course material?
Anonymous: YouTube videos.
George: Dr Chui's slides are rather messy and assume the reader possesses much of the background knowledge required to fully understand it. His lecture slides are also lumped into topics that span multiple weeks, instead of being divided into chunks. Hence, students might find it challenging to consolidate their knowledge from his slides alone, as it is akin to reading a long chapter with no subchapters and factual descriptions all the way. Consequently, students could consider reading either of the recommended textbooks to gain the much-needed background insights to then be able to understand the slides:
1. Inorganic Chemistry by Catherine E Housecroft (more visual but less rigorous, might still leave many gaps)
2. Inorganic Chemistry by Martin Weller, Mark T. Weller, Tina Overton, Jonathan Rourke and Fraser A. Armstrong (more explanations provided, but very abstract with few or no examples to illustrate each point)
DolleEicir: Inorganic Chemistry textbooks like Housecraft and Miessler can be useful.
What other courses do you think should be taken before or concurrently with this module?
Anonymous: No comment as this is my first 3K core mod. I think needing to take CM1102 and CM2133 goes unsaid.
George: It is beneficial to review the relevant topics in CM1102 and CM2112, particularly the bonding and symmetry portions. CM3111 covers content that was previously in lower-level courses. It should therefore be taken before CM3253 (solid state portions), CM3212 (coordination chemistry and MO diagrams), and CM4228 (organometallic and solid state portions for parts 1 and 2 respectively), even though CM3111 is not stated as a prerequisite. The fundamental organometallic reactions taught in CM3111 are also covered in CM3121 (C-C coupling, metathesis), and therefore CM3111 could be taken before or concurrently with CM3121.
DolleEicir: Besides the pre-requisite CM2112, also good to do concurrently with CM3191, which is organic and inorganic lab. Maybe CM3121 as well, especially for the last lecture.
