Did you know that sand can be converted into a mixture of gases that spontaneously ignites in air? The procedures involved are relatively simple to perform, spectacular to observe, and relate to a rich assortment of chemical principles.
There are some simple ways to break chemical bonds with microscale techniques.
In this ChemBasics Talk, Nora Walsh offers everything necessary to plan a unit on the topic of chemical bonding and naming including introductory and discovery activities, manipulative activities, practice problems, her favorite online teaching resources and more. Watch the recording and access resources she shared.
Stephanie O'Brien shares lessons learned and strategies for utilizing choice boards in chemistry classroom.
A Soviet era stamp featuring a quadruple bond.
Many of us have molecular kits we only use once a year. Dust them off and find new lessons to use them in!
Melissa Hemling shares her favorite manipulatives along with cheap at-home alternatives to help students visualize VSEPR.
Like most concepts in chemistry, intermolecular forces takes a bit of imagination and critical thinking to fully comprehend and apply when explaining a variety of situations. Though demonstrating the presence of these forces in a simple and explicit manner can easily be done, I wanted to change how I introduced IMFs a bit this year by focusing on a more data-to-concepts approach.
Erica Jacobsen shares highlights from the April 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.
Card sorts are a great way to achieve a number of classroom objectives. They can be used as a review activity or they can be done during the middle of a lesson as a type of formative assessment. Sorts can encourage students to work with other students or can even be used as a type of exit ticket. I decided to use the strategy about two thirds of the way through a unit on covalent and ionic compounds and lewis structures. I knew there were items we did not cover in the sort but I was curious to see how they would approach these unknown topics.
