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CHEM3322: Introduction to Inorganic Chemistry

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2. SciFinderⁿ [SciFinder-n] Refresher

Refresher Source Material

SciFinderⁿ [SciFinder-n] Exercises

1. Search for the substance Tren. What kinds of spectra have been recorded for this substance?

2. Using the Hill system, (C, H, then all other elements in alphabetical order), the molecular formula for Tren is C6H18N4. From the SciFindern home screen, combine Advanced Search fields to find substances with that molecular formula which boil at temperatures below 100°C.

3. Retrieve all of the references about Tren from the Substances screen. Search Within Results for uranium, actinide. Filter the results by Document Type to find journal articles. How many results do you get? Look at the displayed abstracts for the first few items, which are mostly primary literature.

4. Filter the results of exercise 3 by Document Type again to find only (a) review article(s). How do(es) the displayed abstract(s) compare to those for the articles reporting primary research?

5. Because SciFindern uses "black box" search algorithms, sometimes you don't know which additional terms it adds to your search. How could you check that your search in exercise 3 retrieved items using the plural term actinides?

6. Remove filters until you return to all of the references about Tren (or run the Tren search again). Use the Concepts filter to find terms relevant to the idea of substances containing uranium and/or another actinide element. Filter the results to find journal articles written in English. Look at the institutional affiliations (Organization) of the authors who wrote the articles. How could you make sure you found articles published by 3 completely distinct research teams?

7. Select one of the references and examine the references citing it in turn. These are newer publications. Do any of them seem to be relevant to the chemistry of uranium compounds? Are they all relevant to this topic?