Apologia: Chemistry-Moles!

The Chemistry class reviewed the POGIL (Chemistry Collection), ChemActivity 1, Nuclear Atom.  The POGIl exercises have all of the information required to answer the question right in the activity and are designed to help students dive deeper into the material.  A little goes a long way!  After reviewing the activity, the class graphed another data set with the graphing calculators- this time with the diagnostic ON, so they could evaluate how well the regression model fit their data set.

The kids also did two labs: Percent composition and Metal Reactivity.  The kids are still reviewing types of chemical equations and how to balance equations.  They are practicing with Cavalcade Chemistry worksheets.  These worksheets have answer keys, which I included this week so the kids can see if they are getting the concept or not.  The Cavalcade worksheets are pretty well edited.  It can be rough if the answer key is wrong.  The Percent Composition Lab can be performed with Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate hepta hydrate and calcium chloride dihydrate, Driveway Heat.  I bought inexpensive test tubes.  When the kids heat the salts in the test tube, sometimes the salt won't come out without breaking the tube.  The kids used an alcohol burner instead of a Bunsen burner.  The lab was fine.  The kids should weigh both the chemical sample and the test tube before heating their samples.  I like the kids to get in the habit of repeating their labs three times to get a better average.  But, this can result in quite a loss of test tubes.  They also did a metal reactivity lab or single replacement lab.  Basically, we used the metals and metallic salt solutions on hand: magnesium metal, magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts), silver nitrate, copper sulfate (root killer-inexpensive), copper shot, calcium chloride, and iron nails.  Next week, we are going to go over their results to see which metals are more reactive and what an activity series is.