January 25th, 2018
Welcome back to the Nerdy Teacher's Corner scientists!
Today we will spending time applying some of the concepts we learned during last class.
To start off, I have placed whiteboards around the class. One for each table. We start up by working out the electron configuration for Titanium. They can use their notes to help. I walk around and look at what the kids are coming up, but don't really tell them if they're right or wrong.
One of the biggest misconceptions I notice is that students are confusing the orbital box diagram with electron configuration. For others, they are drawing both. Somewhere in the explanation of the lesson last class confused students. However, on a great positive note, students are obtaining the correct orbital diagram and the correct electron configuration.
As everyone finishes up, we do discuss exactly what I was looking for.
In hindsight, I wish I had asked them to refer back to their interactive notebooks and they tell me what the orbital box diagram is versus the electron configuration. In this way, students would know why their answer was incorrect rather than me telling them.
To continue, we have done a warmup. This particular warmup will be written on pg. 51 so they have an example. In this case, I have asked them to write the electron configuration of a different element. As we review, students are much more confident in their answers knowing exactly the difference between an orbital diagram and electron configuration.
Once we completed this, I gave them a worksheet with practice on orbital diagrams and electron configuration. I only give them about 15 minutes to work on this. They will not be able to do the last part of the worksheet which goes into the Noble Gas Configuration. We have not covered this yet.
For the last 50 minutes of class, we will be doing an activity that will count as a lab grade. The lab is called Quantum Mechanics and Split Peas. I have put that on my Resources page. I have put the link below.
In this simulation, students will be taking split peas or lentils, put them through a funnel, and drop them into a target. They will count the number of peas that fall in each area, and graph the data. As you notice on the lab, there are questions students must answer. The data they obtain creates a probability graph on where the peas should land. It simulates how the quantum mechanical model works. Of course, it doesn't simulate exactly, but it does convey the idea in a more concrete way.
Now, to be successful in this lab, there are a few key points. The funnel should be positioned no more than 10 centimeters above the target. We noticed that if we did this higher than 10 cm, then the peas would mostly land in area 6. There wasn't really an even distribution. The height provides too much kinetic energy in the peas and causes them to bounce farther out. I had my kids create paper funnels because the funnels we had, the hole was too small for the peas to go through nicely. Finally, there are instructions to hold the the opening of the funnel and not let go until all the peas are in the funnel. We noticed that if you didn't do this, the peas tended to stay around area 6. This didn't create a nice bell graph like we wanted to. Below is the graph we expect to see if we control these different things.
I realize that these are a lot of little modifications, but we wanted the simulation to be realistic to the quantum mechanical model. If we didn't take these steps, we would just see a straight line graph. This simulation went very quickly. This gave students the opportunity to take time to finish the analysis in class. Most of my kids were able to finish the entire lab and analysis. However, I still gave them until Monday to finish it up if they did not finish today. One thing I will mention is that question 4 on the analysis is something I would like to change. I was looking for my students to realize that with 40 mL of peas, they should not see a difference in having a bell graph. The only difference they would see is that the numbers would increase per area.
Well, that's all I have for you today!
Join us next time in the Nerdy Teacher's Corner!
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