11-13 yrs old
14-18 yrs old
Art and Design
Science
Technology
Atoms and molecules can be represented in several ways, including ball and stick models and chemical formula.
March 9, 2020
Lesson Plan
My Notes
Molcraft
Types of Isomers
Naming Compounds
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Lesson 5
Chemical formula provide information about how many atoms of a particular element are in a molecule. Structures provide information about how the atoms are arranged in space and how they bond to each other.
Atoms are commonly represented by balls of different colors. By convention the colors schemes used are:
Hydrogen - White
Carbon - Black
Oxygen - Red
Sulfur - Yellow
Nitrogen - Blue
Phosphorus - purple
Halogens (chlorine, bromine, iodine, fluorine) - green
Metals - Grey
Three dimensional molecular models are built by connecting these balls together with sticks that represent chemical bonds. Two dimensional models are drawn using the elements' chemical symbol and connecting the atoms with lines.
Elements can form different number of bonds, this is known as valency. For example, carbon can form 4 bonds so we say it has a valency of four. Hydrogen has a valency of one, so it can only form 1 bond. This means that 1 carbon can form bonds with 4 hydrogen atoms, to create CH4. Oxygen has a valency of two, nitrogen (normally) has a valency of 3.
Students may discover that a chemical formula does not always provide enough information to be able to build a molecular structure. There are 2 ways that C4H10 can be constructed. These 2 molecules are known as isomers. Isomers are molecules that have the same formula but different structures.
Students should create simple structures to represent atoms of a particular element using, for example, colored wool.
First create molecular models of compounds containing just carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons). Then increase the complexity of the molecule by introducing oxygen and nitrogen.
Alternatively students can create two dimensional representations of molecules using the element blocks available in Minecraft.
For guidance students can look for compounds in Minecraft that contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and/or nitrogen and then try and build structures of these molecules.
Create representations of atoms.
Build molecular structures.
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