The Chemistry Name Game
As students play the Chemistry Name Game, they will learn why compounds form as they do. They will also learn how to correctly name chemical compounds and write chemical formulas.
Cleaning Up With Atom Economy
The green chemistry principle of atom economy applies to chemical reactions, and minimizes waste down to the molecular level. This exercise uses molecular models to calculate atom economy for a saponification reaction.
Endangered Elements Infographic
The Period Table of Endangered Elements presents elements facing supply restrictions in the coming years. The research was conducted by the Chemical Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network.
Download an Updated Periodic Table from ACS Publications
Is the periodic table hanging in your lab, classroom, or office woefully out of date? Replace that old relic with a free updated periodic table from ACS Publications!
Unit Plan: The Periodic Table
This unit plan from the American Association of Chemistry Teachers has everything you need to put together a unit plan for your classroom: lessons, activities, labs, projects, videos, simulations, and animations. We constructed a unit plan using AACT resources that is designed to teach the Periodic Table to your students.
Ptable.com Investigations
In this activity, students will use the online periodic table, ptable.com, to investigate a number of chemistry concepts. Students will use this online resource to explore information about the elements, including historical data, physical properties, periodic trends and more.
Exploring Elements
In this project, students will select an element and then use Ptable.com to explore aspects of the element including its periodicity, electron configuration, history, and uses in industry.
Guidelines and Recommendations for Teaching Middle & High School Chemistry
Learn to navigate the core concepts of chemistry based on recommended standards for middle school and high school students. Chemistry lessons often include hands-on activities in the lab. ACS gives you a variety of tools to ensure your learning spaces, lesson plans, and materials are safe for you and your students. These strategies are written specifically for chemistry teachers and address the challenges of helping students reach their fullest potential in chemistry.
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Elements in the same group in the periodic table have the same number of electrons in their highest energy level (outer electrons) and this gives them similar chemical properties.
As you read along a Period (left to right), elements show increasing atomic number. The Periodic table starts at element atomic number 1 (this is Hydrogen, symbol H) and ends at element atomic number 118 (Ununoctium, symbol Uuo).
Group 0 (or Group 8) elements chemically unreactive
They are unreactive because their atoms have stable arrangements of electrons.
Noble gases have eight electrons in their outermost energy level, except for helium, which has only two electrons.
This means their outermost shell of electrons are fully occupied by electrons, which means there is no tendency for the atom to transfer or share electrons during chemical reactions, making it chemically stable.
The lesson, Exploring the periodic table, incorporated three Science Learning Hub activities to facilitate student learning. The activities came from Investigating elements, Strange liquids and Nanoscience.
The periodic table is an essential resource for all chemistry students, as it supplies you with vital information that you will need to solve a variety of problems. Hence, it is imperative that you familiarise yourself with it and learn how to read it quickly and accurately. The more adept you are at gleaning information from the periodic table, the better you will become at chemistry as a whole.
The periodic table features over a hundred different elements, and at first glance, it is not always easy to find patterns. Luckily, the periodic table is designed to be highly systematic, and you can learn to read it quickly using a few common strategies.
The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of elements, is a chart that displays all known chemical elements in an organised, systematic way. There are currently 118 different elements represented on the periodic table, each with their own structure, properties and characteristics.
The last two periods are somewhat unique, because they contain the lanthanide and actinide series. The lanthanide series includes elements with atomic number 57 to 71, and is included between barium and lutetium in the sixth period. Similarly, the actinide series includes elements with atomic number 89 to 102, and is included between radium and lawrencium in the seventh period.
The lanthanide and actinide series are usually presented as two separate rows beneath the main periodic table, and represent the inner transition metals. The lanthanide series includes elements such as lanthanum (La), europium (Eu) and ytterbium (Yb), while the actinide series includes elements such as uranium (U), plutonium (Pu) and even einsteinium (Es)!
All the elements in the same period have the same number of electron shells. This is where the electrons within the element are stored. The row number corresponds to the number of electron shells within each element in that row. For example, hydrogen and helium have 1 electron shell each, while lithium, carbon and fluorine in the second row have 2 electron shells each.
Elements in the same group have the same number of electrons in their outer electron shell. This means that their ions will have the same positive or negative charge. For example, sodium (Na) and potassium (K) are both in Group 1, and have 1 electron in their outer shell and lose 1 electron to form a cation. Hence, they will become the ions Na+ and K+, with a charge of +1.
This is because the electrons from the metal flow into the surrounding water to form a hydroxide and hydrogen gas, in an extremely fast reaction that produces a significant amount of heat. Other experiments will show that elements in other groups also share properties similar to one another.
Each individual element has its own element box, which contains important information about it that differentiates it from other elements. You can also form your own inferences based on the information given in this box. Generally, there are four important pieces of information included in each element box.
This is the small number at the top of the box, indicating the number of protons or electrons in the atom. Each atom contains the same number of protons and electrons, until it becomes ionised through the gain or loss of electrons.
With the exception of hydrogen, elements closer to the left-hand side of the periodic table are metals and elements closer to the right-hand side are non-metals. The metalloids, which serve as a transition between them, include boron (B), silicon (Si) and antimony (Sb).
The elements with atomic numbers 1 through 94 are said to be naturally occurring; that is, they can be found in nature without the need for synthesising. The elements with atomic numbers 95 through 118 do not occur naturally and exist because they were successfully synthesised in labs, nuclear reactors and nuclear explosions.
With over 20 years of combined experience, our experienced science tutors are committed to helping our students get the most of their science education, and instilling in them a passion for general science, physics, chemistry and biology.
On June 1, India cut a slew of foundational topics from tenth grade textbooks, including the periodic table of elements, Darwin's theory of evolution, the Pythagorean theorem, sources of energy, sustainable management of natural resources and contribution of agriculture to the national economy, among others.
These changes effectively block a major swath of Indian students from exposure to evolution through textbooks, because tenth grade is the last year mandatory science classes are offered in Indian schools.
That means the only students who will learn evolution under these new cuts are those who have opted to "major" in biology in their final two years. Students who opt for a different topic, like commerce, computer science or humanities, won't have the opportunity.
In a statement, the council rationalized the reduction by stating they wanted to reduce the content load on students in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Defending its decision to chop off evolution and the periodic table, the council said "that children may not have to study same concepts at different stages and it needs to be done at appropriate stage. (sic)"
Outside of science, topics such as democracy and governance have also been severely diluted. Scientists fear this overall move to expunge some of these foundational topics will facilitate a climate ripe for superstition and unreason to fester.
In 2018, Indian minister for higher education Satyapal Singh baffled the scientific community by demanding that the theory of evolution be removed from school curriculum becaue "no one ever saw an ape turning into a human being." Other political leaders from the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party came to his defense on social media.
While fields like astrology have always slipped in and out of fashion in India, research institutions are seeing increased funding toward the exploration of pseudoscientific topics. One that caught the public attention was the call for research proposals on the medical benefits of cow urine. On multiple occasions, Hindu groups have spread false information about the benefits of cow urine, including claims that it cures Covid-19. Scientists took to the streets in India to counter the claims.
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