Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table
This unit finally introduces the structure of an atom, including the importance of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Students learn the history of the periodic table, how to read it, and what the major periodic trends are. This unit also includes the history of how the atom was discovered, including the famous gold foil experiment, Bohr models, and atomic spectra. Students will also learn about ions and isotopes, as well as the meaning behind average atomic mass.
Atoms and the Periodic Table Powerpoint Lecture
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Purpose: This Powerpoint lecture starts with a history of how atoms were discovered, from Democritus through Dalton, JJ Thomson, Rutherford, and Bohr. Students then learn about the layout and organization of the periodic table before ending with ions, isotopes, and average atomic mass.
Essential Concepts: Atoms, periodic table, protons, neutrons, electrons, average atomic mass, atomic number, ions, isotopes.
Atoms and the Periodic Table Student Notes Outline
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Purpose: This is a fillable notes outline to accompany the atoms and the periodic table Powerpoint. These are helpful to use if you have students who struggle with effective note-taking and either write nothing down at all or try to write everything (and fail to listen to actual lecture).
Essential Concepts: Atoms, periodic table, protons, neutrons, electrons, average atomic mass, atomic number, ions, isotopes.
Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table
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Purpose: This is a worksheet that introduces the relationship between an element's position on the periodic table and its atomic structure. Students will learn about protons, neutrons, and electrons, and how to determine the number of each based on an element's atomic mass and atomic number.
Essential Concepts: Periodic table, protons, neutrons, electrons, atomic mass, atomic number.
PhET Build an Atom Interactive Activity
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Purpose: This is an interactive activity from PhET where students can experiment with different size atoms by adding protons, neutrons, and electrons to see how it affects their identity, charge, mass, and stability.
Essential Concepts: Atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, ions, isotopes.
Exploring the Periodic Table
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Purpose: Students need to have a solid understanding of the basic layout and design of the periodic table to be successful in chemistry. In this assignment, students will color-code a blank periodic table with important familes, such as the transition metals, alkali metals, and halogens. There are also multiple questions that require students to search through the elements for ones named for specific reasons, such as after a country or a person.
Essential Concepts: Periodic table, metals, nonmetals, metalloids, periods, families, groups, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, transition metals, halogens, noble gases, lanthanides, actinides.
Extra Practice Worksheet - Using the Periodic Table
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Purpose: This is a worksheet of practice problems I assign to students who are had difficulty with the Exploring the Periodic Table worksheet or did poorly on the quiz based on that material. Students are given a shortened periodic table to analyze, then a list of elements they have to calculate the protons, neutrons, and electrons for.
Essential Concepts: Periodic table, metals, nonmetals, metalloids, periods, families, groups, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, transition metals, halogens, noble gases, lanthanides, actinides, electrons, neutrons, protons..
Chemthink - Atomic Structure
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This chemthink module covers the structure of atoms, including protons, neutrons, and electrons. The impact that each subatomic particle has on the atom's mass, charge, identity, and reactivity are all discussed.
Essential concepts: Atoms, atomic structure, protons, neutrons, electrons.
Ions and Ion Notation
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Once students understand the basic structure of a neutral atom, they can begin to learn some of the changes that can occur to them. One of those is the formation of an ion, when an atom gains or loses electrons and becomes charged. This worksheet will help them visually understand how ions are formed, and give some practice on writing ion notation.
Essential concepts: Ions, ion notation, electrons, cations, anions.
Chemthink - Isotopes
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This chemthink module covers isotopes and average atomic mass. Students wil learn how to calculate average atomic mass when given the percent abundance of each isotope.
Essential concepts: Isotopes, average atomic mass.
Isotopes and Isotope Notation
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Purpose: Many elements exist in more than one isotope, where they have different numbers of neutrons and different masses. This worksheet will give students some visual examples of how isotopes are different, and allow them to practice writing isotope notation.
Essential Concepts: Isotopes, isotope notation, neutrons, atomic mass.
Extra Practice Worksheet - Ion and Isotope Notation
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Purpose: This is a worksheet of extra practice problems for students who struggled with the ions and ion notation worksheet, and/or the isotopes and isotope notation worksheet. Students are given a simple table that gives limited information about an isotope or ion, and they fill in the rest.
Essential Concepts: Ions, ion notation, electrons, anions, cations, Isotopes, isotope notation, neutrons, atomic mass.
Calculating Average Atomic Mass
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Purpose: Part of understanding isotopes is realizing how their abundance determines the average atomic mass shown with each element of the periodic table. This worksheet will show students how these numbers are calculated, and help them understand why the atomic mass of oxygen is 15.99 AMU instead of simply 16 AMU.
Essential Concepts: Isotopes, average atomic mass, isotope abundance, atomic mass units.
Atoms, Elements, and the Periodic Table Study Guide
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Purpose: Once the instruction for the unit is completed, students can complete this study guide to aid in their preparation for a written test. The study guide is divided into two sections: vocabulary and short answer questions. The vocabulary words can be found scattered throughout the different instructional worksheets from this unit. The short answer questions are conceptual and meant to see if the students are able to apply what they've learned in the unit.
