MIT Principles of Chemical Science, Fall 2014 View the complete course: Instructor: Catherine Drennan Crystal field theory was developed to explain the special features of transition metal complexes, including their beautiful colors and their magnetic properties. In part I of this topic, we consider d-block coordination complexes that have octahedral geometry, and see whether we can change the color of a paper flower dipped in an octahedral cobalt chloride complex just by adding water. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA More information at More courses at