Doug Ragan been using magnets of elements and subatomic particles for some time to help his students visualize what is happening at the particle level of chemistry. Download the files attached to the post and print out your own set of elements and particles!
The recently published iPad app ChemTube3D (and related website for classrooms without iPads) will be discussed. It has a great deal of functionality - including a large selection of organic mechanism animations and models of structure and bonding.
After receiving positive feedback from Peter Mahaffy, the IUPAC project co-chair of Isotopes Matter, I decided to add an additional component to the original isotope assignment I posted. The second component of the assignment focuses on the applications of both radioactive and stable isotopes using the interactive IUPAC periodic table.
During my 2nd week into summer “vacation” I met with nine other secondary science teachers from my district. We set forth on a week-long curriculum design journey that involved the new Michigan Science Standards (basically NGSS).
A quick search on Amazon for a package of 144 ping pong balls and a trip to the arts and crafts store for paint, magnets, and glue and I was ready to start making my own class set of model kits.
We’ve all seen and use the so-called Aufbau Diagram. It is a mnemonic used to remember the order of “filling” of atomic orbitals during the construction of the ground state electron configurations of the elements. The presentation of this diagram is largely disconnected from any physical meaning. Here’s what we tell our students: “Memorize the diagram, learn to use it, and you’re guaranteed to get the right answer.”
A complete understanding of why each element has a particular electronic configurations is a very complex subject. Even so, some confusion regarding the electronic configurations of the elements may be alleviated by looking at the physical properties of the electronic orbitals.
In my high school chemistry class, a unit we cover is that of atomic structure. In particular, given an elements symbol, mass number, atomic number, and charge, the objective would be for the student to determine the atoms number of protons, neutrons, and electrons. I have several apps/program suggestions that can be useful for this purpose.
The June 2015 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers at http://pubs.acs.org/toc/jceda8/92/6. This issue includes articles on curriculum; assessment; inorganic chemistry; investigating galvanic cells & exploring LEDs; atomic structure; nanochemistry laboratories; physical chemistry in the lab; synthesis.
Last year while attending the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at GVSU I had the opportunity to hear a talk that showed a video of a chemical demonstration showing the burning of magnesium metal. We have all seen many of these videos (thank you YouTube) and probably have performed this demo for our own students many times. During the video it may have been represented with a chemical equation followed by the students being asked to balance the equation or maybe even predict the products. Although the use of video including the showing of the equation nicely represents the macroscopic and symbolic representation, what was so unique about this particular video is that it also included the particulate representation embedded on top of the video of the demo. This was the first time I had seen the particulate level representation done like that and so I was intrigued in wanting to find more of these representations.
