Question

This anion (“ANN-eye-on”) is reduced in the most common redox couple for dye-sensitized solar cells. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this hyper·valent anion used as a model system for three-center, four-electron bonding. Thio·sulfate reduces this ion, dissociating one of its covalent bonds, in a common colori·metric redox titration.
ANSWER: tri·iodide [or I3-- (“I-three-minus”); reject “iodide”]
[10e] Hyper·valent species like tri·iodide violate this basic principle of chemical bonding. According to this rule, the sum of lone pairs and bonding pairs of electrons on every main-group atom is four.
ANSWER: octet rule
[10m] Photo·chemists use tri·iodide to simulate the hyper·valent transition state of this organic reaction mechanism. In this concerted mechanism, donation of a lone pair into a sigma-star orbital coincides with leaving group departure.
ANSWER: SN2 [or bimolecular nucleophilic substitution; prompt on substitution or nucleophilic substitution]

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Data

TeamOpponentPart 1Part 2Part 3Total
Chicago ABrown A010010
Chicago BStanford A0101020
Claremont AVirginia A010010
Columbia AChicago C1010020
Cornell AFlorida A010010
Cornell BHarvard A10101030
Duke AOhio State A0101020
Florida BUC Berkeley B0101020
Georgia Tech AWUSTL A010010
Illinois AYale B0000
Imperial AColumbia B010010
Indiana AUC Berkeley A010010
Iowa State ASouth Carolina A010010
Minnesota ATexas A10101030
Minnesota BVanderbilt A010010
NYU AJohns Hopkins A0101020
North Carolina ANorthwestern A10101030
Penn AMcGill A0101020
Penn State AWUSTL B0101020
Purdue AMichigan A0101020
Rutgers AGeorgia Tech B0000
Rutgers BHouston A010010
Toronto AMIT A0101020
Yale AMaryland A0101020