Molecular geometry is a center piece to a student’s understanding of intermolecular forces. Unfortunately, many students don’t have the special skills to “see” the geometry without a model kit. Check out this inexpensive take-home model kit!
This lab guides students through taking data and constructing their own heating curve for water. It requires no special equipment, is low prep, is safe, and can even be done at home for homeschool or distance learning. Even though the lab activity itself is relatively simple and straightforward, the concepts still engage students in higher level thinking and gives them important practice with laboratory techniques and forming hypotheses.
Explore how small the stuff that makes up matter is and consider what those tiny particles are doing in this engaging activity.
In this lab, students are presented with nine unknown substances. By performing a series of tests, analyzing chemical structures, and applying their understanding of how intermolecular forces affect the properties of a substance, students will ultimately determine the identity of each unknown.
Did you figure out how to create a multi-colored mixture? Check out the solution to Chemical Mystery #19: Multi-colored Mixture!
Thin sheets of polystyrene can be patterned with permanent markers to represent repeating units of the polymer and then shrunk down in size using heat. The shrunken models of the repeating units can be connected with a string and then flipped into positions to demonstrate different types of polymer tacticity.
Atomic theory is a common topic throughout any introductory chemistry course. It is likely that Rutherford’s gold foil experiment gets at least some attention in your course. This simple activity gives students an opportunity to replicate Rutherford’s experiment through an analogy experiment that may allow for easier conceptualization of the experiment itself and provide additional support for model development.
Chad Husting uses a few simple gas law experiments to introduce his students to the particulate level of chemistry.
Summertime means doing chemistry experiments with flowers found growing in the yard...
Allowing students to confront the failure of a model and then helping them construct a new or slightly modified model to account for new observations is at the heart of the process of science. Ben Meacham shares one approach that can be deployed with a variation of depth, making it attainable for anyone learning about chemistry.
