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Chapter 1: Fun with the Periodic Table

Chapter Challenge

As you study the properties of the elements, you become able to place them into categories. You will learn how Mendeleev was able to arrange the elements according to the chemical behavior that was known at his time. Your challenge is to develop a game that can be used to teach others how to learn and use the periodic table. These games are left up to your creativity. Card, computer, or board games are some choices that you may decide to use.

Activity Summaries

Chemistry Principles

Activity 1: Organizing a Store

Students organize a store by categorizing the different items that are contained in the store and discover what to do with new items that had not been accounted for.

  • Periodicity
  • Trends
  • Mendeleev

Activity 2: Elements and Their Properties

Students determine some of the physical and chemical properties of elements and learn how to use this information to organize elements into families.

 

  • Atoms
  • Elements
  • Physical properties
  • Chemical properties
  • Conductivity
  • Reactivity
  • pH

Activity 3: Atoms and Their Masses

Students show why they believe in atoms and how the elements of different atoms interact with each other in a single-replacement reaction.

  • Atoms
  • Atomic mass
  • Single replacement
  • Double-replacement reaction
  • Law of Definite Proportions
  • Compounds
  • Filtration
  • Quantitative analysis
  • Measurements
  • Mole
  • Avogadro’s number
  • Dalton
  • Gay-Lussac
  • Proust

Activity 4: Are Atoms Indivisible?

Students learn through experimentation the properties of electrons and how Rutherford’s experiment determined the location of the proton. In addition to this, they find that the nucleus is very dense.

  • Cathode rays
  • Properties of electrons
  • Nucleus
  • Alpha particles
  • Dalton’s Atomic Theory
  • Rutherford
  • Thomson
  • Nagaoka
  • Millikan
  • Coulomb’s Law

Activity 5: The Electronic Behavior of Atoms

Students learn that when energy is supplied to a hydrogen atom, its electron is excited to higher levels and gives off light when it falls to lower levels. They also learn how to calculate the frequency of light waves and the energy of these waves.

  • Hydrogen line spectrum
  • Frequency
  • Wavelength
  • Photons
  • Einstein
  • Bohr’s Atomic Model
  • Electromagnetic spectrum
  • Spectroscopic analysis
  • Planck
  • Quantum

Activity 6: Atoms with More than One Electron

Students discover that each element produces a unique line spectrum and that the ionization potential of the elements helps them to understand why the elements occupy certain positions on the periodic table.

  • Element line spectrum
  • Ionization energy
  • Ion
  • Electron configuration
  • Period, Group, s, p, d, f orbitals
  • Excited state
  • Ground state
  • Heisenberg
  • Wave-particle duality
  • Atomic number

Activity 7: How Electrons Determine Chemical Behavior

Students learn how to write the electron configuration for all of the elements. They also discover how the electron configuration can be used to show why families of elements behave the same with other elements.

  • Electron configuration
  • Inert gases
  • Noble gases
  • Valence electrons
  • Chemical families
  • Transition elements
  • Rayleigh
  • Cavendish
  • Ramsay

Activity 8: How Atoms Interact with Each Other

Students learn why atoms combine in certain proportions by transferring or sharing electrons from one atom to another. Students also learn the difference between an ionic and covalent bond.

  • Octet rule
  • Bonding
  • Ionic bonds
  • Covalent bonds
  • Chemical formulas
  • Binary compounds
  • Electron dot structure
  • Bonding electrons
  • Nonbonding electrons

Activity 9: What Determines and Limits an Atom’s Mass?

The students learn how to determine the atomic mass of an element and how the average atomic mass is determined from the common isotopes of an element. The activity also leads them through the factors that determine nuclear stability and how fission and fusion differ.

  • Atomic Mass
  • Isotopes
  • Neutrons
  • Nucleons
  • Beta particle
  • Radioactivity
  • Half-life
  • Binding energy
  • Electrostatic forces
  • Strong nuclear force
  • Nuclear fission
  • Nuclear decay
  • Nuclear fusion
  • Gamma ray