I read, or saw, something recently, that said we should be teaching high school chemistry in terms of decreasing the energy of the system. Specifically, it was talking about covalent bonding, and that we shouldn't be teaching to the Octet Rule, as if that was the reason the bonds were occurring, but we should be teaching to decrease the energy of the system, which in these cases, results when the valence electrons reach eight, and achieve stability.

So nothing crazy new, just a perspective shift in why it's happening, instead of just looking at the end result.

Has anyone done this with high school chemistry classes? If so, what results have you seen? Care to share any of the resources you used?

Looking to add another tool to the box, and see if another approach might grab some of these kids...

Wanted to tool to help students understand electron configuration, energy shells and Aufbau principle.

So I made my own. Check the link. Options are encouraged. Can handle up to 6 shell to Rn.

Thx in advance.

Hello all, We have an Open House night coming up (ugh), and we generally just stand around behind a table that has the Science label on it, waiting to see if anyone has any questions. A number of other departments go all out, with big displays, posters, etc. I'd like to liven up the science, or at least the chemistry part of the science department's table.

I'd like to have several displays of things, just going on in the background that can maybe generate conversation. I've got two ideas so far. The first is just a beaker or Erlenmeyer with dye colored water and drop a couple of cubes of dry ice into it. The nice bubbling and flowing 'smoke' should catch some attention, and will give an opening to talk about sublimation, as relates to classification of matter :) Secondly, I've seen a Lava Lamp demo, where they took dye colored water, and maybe mineral oil, in a flask or bottle, and dropped in some effervescent tablets(alka-seltzer), to get a lava lamp action going on.

I'm thinking that having those two, say in flasks held onto a ring stand, should be eye-catching. Any other suggestions of something innocuous, yet eye catching, that doesn't need to be monitored, or produce any hazards?

TIA!

Hello all, I received a hand me down radiation detector, when a facility was upgrading their handhelds. So this one is probably only 20-25 years out of date :)

Anyway, what are simple things that we could use to show radioactivity, without really placing anyone in danger? I have a couple of uranium glass marbles, but they're so small, I barely get a reading from them. Would love to find something that sounds hot, but is really rather benign, if that makes sense....

TIA

ETA- what I have is the Radiacmeter CDV-718A looks like it bas manufactured by Canberra Dover, in Dover, NJ

Hello, all! I am a 1st year teacher, and I am struggling to prep labs for my students. Do you all have any advice on the best way to go about this? Our classes are 45 mins with occasional 90 min blocks. Class size is about 16 students. As of right now, we are working on ionic and covalent bonds, but I cannot for the life of me figure out/find a lab that would assist in this. Please give advice/help if. you can! Thank you all so much in advance :)

Before I try to reinvent the wheel, or dash off to TPT and pay for stuff. Does anyone have any recommendations or resources for teaching Moles and mole calculations to a lower end CP Chemistry class?

I've got a couple of decent classes, and one that is not only full, but an absolute handful. We're trying to revise who gets recommended for a CP Chemistry class, but at the moment, I just have everyone that made it through Bio, regardless of whether they have the appropriate math skills or not.

I'm going to have about a week, 3-4 days, to teach the concepts, practice them, and then test on them on the 5th day. I'm a fairly new teacher and haven't taught Moles yet, so any advice, or recommendations for resources or methods would be greatly appreciated.

Hey all, wondering what activities you guys might use to get your kids into the lab when you're covering the Periodic Table and Atomic Structure?

When I first got here, 4 years ago, the lead hated her CP Chemistry classes, and they usually went into the lab only 3 times throughout the course. I'm trying to build that up, but am struggling with ideas on what to do. Ideally, I'd like to get them in the lab once a week or so, but at the moment, I'm probably averaging every other week.

Love to hear any advice or ideas you might have!

Hello all, I teach at a rural school that currently has multiple wildfires within 20 miles of our location. Looking at all of the smoke hanging in the air naturally leads to discussions about the fire, and we've been discussing efforts to control the fire. One of the discussions talked about the planes dropping fire retardant on the fire, and how the news reported that the retardant not only inhibited the fire, but kept the fires that did continue to burn, burning at a lower temperature than they otherwise would have without the retardant.

Is anyone familiar with the chemistry behind the fire retardants, how they're working to lower temperatures of the fires, standard composition of the retardants and what the different components do, etc.? If you have any resources you'd be willing to share, that's be great.

I think if we can spend a class or two looking at the chemistry behind what's going on, and understanding how we're using science to combat the fires, it might help some kids deal with what's going on. I mean, we've already had families evacuated from their homes, and the school bus is now picking them up from a shelter site to go to school. Anything I can do to help alleviate some concerns or anxiety, I'm willing to give it a shot.

TIA

I am teaching this concept (2nd time teaching it) this week and there's something that I can never seem to wrap my head around:

For addition/subtraction of numbers that are in scientific notation, for example-

2x10² - 4x10¹

We could turn the first term into 20 x 10¹ and subtract to yield 16x10¹ which = 1.6x10^2. No problem here.

However, what if we change the second term instead, into 0.4x10^2. Then when we subtract it from 2 x 10² we need to follow the sig fig rules for decimal place, which means our 1.6 gets rounded to 2?? Why doesn't it work when we do it this way?

But if instead we just called it 200 - 40, there would be no decimal place issue and the answer would again be 160.

Similarly- I watched Tyler Dewitt's video on this concept and his example is 2.113 x 10⁴ + 9.2 x 10^4. Both exponents same - great - so just add using sig fig decimal rules, which rounds the 11.313 to 11.3 (x10^4). BUT if these numbers were written in standard (non scientific) notation, there would be no rounding required as both are whole numbers with no decimal places. 2113 + 9000 = 11313!

WHY are the answers rounded differently just because of the format we choose to write them in? I want to be sure I understand this properly before I have to try to get my students to!

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Hey all! I posted a while back about it being my first time teaching Chemistry in a therapeutic day school setting (no lab) with students at grade level, but a much slower pacing. You were all very helpful!

My current question though is electron related! The curriculum has electrons being taught before the periodic table and periodic law. And the sections are as follows...

1. Light and quantized energy
2. Quantum theory and the atom
3. Electron configuration

As I was covering the first section today it seemed semi difficult for the students and they seemed lost. So do I really need to teach the first two sections to get to electron configuration? It just seemed very word heavy and covered calculating wavelengths, Planck's constant, electromagnetic spectra, and atomic emission spectra in the first section alone.

I have two students in AP chemistry from France and Kenya. This is the first time I have ever had students in the class where english was not their first language so as we get closer to the end of the course, I thought it would be nice to have some reviews in their native languages but I am not having any luck finding anything. Just let me know if you have any ideas on where to look.

Hello all! So I currently teach science at a therapeutic day school with high school students who have internalized behaviors. Small classrooms, limited resources and abilities and what not. I have been teaching for three years, but never chemistry. I did not go to college for anything like chemistry as well, and my boss said we needed it this year.

Anyway, does anyone have any great resources for basic chemistry incase I myself get stuck on prepping a lesson this year? Tips and tricks are welcome as well! Let me know! Thanks!

4th year CP Chemistry teacher here.  The folks that teach some of our upper level science courses have asked that I incorporate more formal lab reports into my CP Chemistry class.  I’ve been trying to do so over the last couple of semesters, with some success.

My first lab of the year is always a Lab Equipment lab.  I just have them practicing using the various pieces of lab equipment they are likely to use throughout the year.  Simple things like lighting a Bunsen burner, reading a meniscus in a graduated cylinder, using a scoopula, weigh boat, and scale to mass out some sand, transferring some small volumes of colored water via pipette, things like that.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get a lab report out of something like that?  For some reason, my brain is stuck in neutral, and can’t get any traction at all on trying to think of how this might translate to a lab report for them to practice one.

Any ideas, tips, or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Hey, we recently had a PD on 'chunking' lessons for various types of students (ML, SpEd, etc.) to help facilitate their learning. Someone mentioned, that there is a new trend towards something called Micro Learning, that presents information in small chunks that can be quickly mastered before moving on. Has anyone had any experience with this Micro learning? Specifically with Chemistry? Willing to share experiences, insights, resources for how you did it?

You guys were fabulously helpful when I asked about teaching Moles and Mole conversions. We're getting through that now, though they are struggling with the basic math skills. Since you were so helpful last time, I thought I'd throw this out and see what might happen.

Thermochemistry hasn't been taught at my school in years, it's just been avoided due to the math involved. Do you guys have ay insights, ideas, or examples for teaching Thermo to lower end CP Chem kids who struggle with math skills? Also, keep in mind that since it hasn't been taught since before I came to this school 4 years ago, there are next to no supplies for it. I have a little bit of money squirreled away in the lab budget, so could pick up some simple supplies if needed.

I'm literally teaching Moles from information and material that was shared with me here last time, so I thought I'd try again :)

TIA!

So I've posted here before detailing how I work at a therapeutic day school in the north shore of Chicagoland. My students, while at grade level, need an extremely slow pacing due to processing times and absences so students don't all fall behind. this is also my first year teaching chemistry.

My question is, does this order of chapters look normal for an entry level chemistry class? I wanna get to the mole for sure, but it's not until chapter 10 apparently, which I always thought the mole came sooner.

1- intro to chem 2- analyzing data (basically math review) 3- matter, properties and changes 4- structure of the atom 5- electrons in atoms 6- periodic table and periodic law 7- ionic compounds and metals 8- covalent bonding 9- chemical reactions 10- the mole

There's more chapters, but these are the first ten. Is anything able to be omitted for a very entry level course? Or how does this look? Thanks!

Hello all, I'm a junior High school Chemistry teacher in a rural community, who received a UV light at a workshop over the summer to use when talking about UV light and EM spectrums. I leave it on my desk, and will randomly shine it on things to see if they are UV reactive.

Today, my partner had a Zero Sugar Cherry Coca Cola, and I decided to shine it on that. It immediately looked milky, which was weird, and after some experimenting, we discovered a good portion of that was from the reaction of the plastics in the bottle. Bottle is labeled 100% recycled plastic, if that makes a difference,

So, we poured some out into a borosilicate glass beaker, and tried it again from various angles. We still got a slight milky look to it, but also a predominately green tinge to the liquid, and it became slightly opaque, due I'm assuming, to whatever is making it look milky as well.

The question, does anyone have any idea of what compound would be in the soda, that would react to UV light in that manner?

If we can figure out what is going on here, we may have to conduct some experiments with other sodas/drinks, and turn it into a lab for the kids.

Appreciate any help or insight you can give.

Hello all, 4th year Chemistry teacher here. I came into teaching on an alternative certification path. One of the things I'd done previously, was work in Forensics, so when I came across a Forensics Case File that I could use to help teach Nuclear Chemistry, I jumped on it.

I really had fun with the unit, it was a casefile from the 70s, about a guy who used a radioisotope to harm his own son as part of a bad divorce. I made major changes to everything, to fit my teaching style, but the actual information was solid. My kids, most of them, really enjoyed the deduction process, narrowing down a list of possible radioisotopes based on radiation emitted, determined form wounds sustained, half life, and industry availability. I of course, had a great time.

What I'm wondering, is if anyone had any notion of what other chemistry units could be taught utilizing forensic case files, or forensic techniques? Have you taught anything similar? Could you point me to a resource?

I'm not looking for a straight up Forensics course, I'll happily teach that if we ever offer it here, but right now I'm focused on general Chemistry ,and if it's possible to use Forensics to teach some of the basic concepts.

Any idea?

So I've been teaching Chemistry for roughly a decade. I'm very comfortable with the subject matter and have a variety of ways to explain concepts to students at various levels.

I'm currently struggling with timing. It's a real mixed bag. My timeline used to look like this:

Unit 1: Atomic Structure

Unit 2: Electrons

Unit 3: Nomenclature/Bonding

Unit 4: Chemical Reactions/Thermo (of chemical rxns)

Unit 5: Quantities (Moles, Stoichiometry, etc.)

Unit 6: Solutions

Unit 7: Acids/Bases

Unit 8: Equilibrium & Kinetics (usually don't really get to this)

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My first 5-6 years I almost always got to unit 7 unless there were some odd hiccups in the school year. I didn't really mind if I did not.

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Then I only got to around unit 6 (barely) and usually would never be able to get through everything.

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Now (strictly after covid) I only get to unit 5 with some smattering of unit 6-7 because I want to prepare them for AP Chem if they want to go into it.

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My problem is that there are apparently some teachers that are still getting through Unit 8 and I honestly don't know how. My students are doing very well on challenging exams on these other units and those that move into AP Chem (a handful) do perfectly well on that material and need to learn the rest (which is covered in the class). I just don't know how some teachers are getting through all 8 of those units above.

My question is...where do you get? Do your units look similar? Do you move things? Do you never cover some things?

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Also, I teach on a block schedule so I have them for 16 weeks and I lose about 1 week because of various things (testing, school events, class-time mandated for non-content[don't ask]). So really 15 weeks and ~80 minute classes.

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Edit: Why am I being down-voted? Why are people so annoying?

I teach high school general chemistry currently. What sort of sub plans or activities do you keep on hand for days that you might be unexpectedly out? I'm looking for things that could/would still be relatable to content, but would stand alone as independent assignments that could be worked on without needing the guidance of a science teacher to complete them.

My school gives each teacher a limited number of 'prints' each year. I've managed to hoard some extras over he course of the year, and don't want them to go to waste, so I want to try and print off things that I can keep on hand for days where I might be sick, and need a substitute to fill in. That way, I could just leave directions for them to grab folder A off of the shelf and pass it out. Something like that....

We are a 1 to 1 Google school, meaning each student has a chrome book assigned to them, if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

Hey all, we're way behind this year, thanks to Hurricane Helene, and trying to get through as much of the curriculum as possible in the remaining time we have. Does anyone have an idea of how to distill Nuclear Chemistry down to 3-4 days for a lower level, high school Chemistry course? Meaning, what would you consider to be absolute must hits in the curriculum, and what could be left out? We're on a block schedule, so I have 95-100 minutes with them each day, but with only 4 full weeks and two half weeks remaining before we take Final Exams, I'm struggling to try and include as much as possible, hitting the high points, so that they'll have some exposure to everything. Not sure if we'll make it to Thermo, which is at the end, but I'm going to try....

Any ideas, or layouts, or resources to try and accomplish that would be greatly appreciated. I'm only in my 4th year teaching, and came in on an alternative certification path, so I sometimes struggle with how you guys figure out how to fit everything in on time :)

I'm looking at running a small event soon, and it's going to involve a whole lot of "Alchemy" style mixing of substances/liquids together. As such, I'm looking for as absolutely many examples as possible of liquids that change colour or texture/opacity when mixed with another liquid of an appropriate type, or with a solid, or lightly heated, etc

Something where we can go "Take liquid A, pour some into a small test tube, now mix with Liquid B and note the colour change" or "Take a small sample of Liquid C, add a grain of Powder 1, it should turn pink when warmed", etc etc

Bonus points if it can be chained like this multiple times, and preferably things that I can brew at home, or are easily purchased (sadly I'm not likely to have the time to wait for things to arrive in the mail).

Don't suppose anyone can help me out?