Note for November 12: Students, please scroll down for additional resources/instruction!
Our learning about electrons culminated today with Lesson 24, in which students understanding of electron shells was expanded to include the concept of subshells. We worked through the first 10 slides of the Lesson 24 PowerPoint, and students also received a copy of the Lesson 24 Worksheet. Students used the last part of class to read through Lesson 24 in the textbook and begin working on the worksheet.
To help students build a better foundation as they learn the challenging concept of electron subshells, students are encouraged to watch the Crash Course chemistry video below:
Want more? There is a follow-up Crash Course video (#25) that picks up where this one left off and takes the content to a whole new shell (sorry, chemistry humor):
Note: No school on Wednesday, November 11 (Veteran’s Day)
Additional content for Thursday, November 12 is being posted in advance to serve as reference material for interested students:
There are two handouts on the front table – one is a new copy of the Periodic Table that includes electron configurations. The other is an outline of the Period Table with electron subshell blocks. Feel free to take one of each to use as a study tool. By now, everyone should have read through Lesson 24 in the textbook. To supplement your learning, I have drawn out an electron subshell filling tool on the left white board (pictured below). By following the orange arrows while moving own the rows, you can see that the electrons fill subshells in a specific way. Remember, the s orbital only has room for 2 electrons, the p orbital has room for 6, the d orbital holds up to 10 electrons, and the f orbital has room for 14 electrons. Following the arrows, you can see that subshell 1s fills first, followed by 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d and so on. The number written in superscript to the right of the subshell indicates how many electrons are in that particular subshell. The electron configurations for hydrogen, helium, and carbon are written and drawn out on the left white board.
The electron configuration for bromine is written out on the right white board (above), along with the question: how many valence electrons does bromine have? You should be able to determine by looking at the Periodic Table that bromine (Br, element number 35) has 7 valence electrons. The question to consider is: how might the electron configuration be used to determine that? The video below will explain that, and will provide you with several practice questions (and answers – pause the video and work through a few of the problems!):
Students looking for a deeper dive into the content, including the advanced concept of electron spin (not something you will be tested on, but I know many of you are bound for college chemistry…), are encouraged to watch the Bozeman Science video below:
We will review Chapter 4 on Friday in preparation for the Chapter 4 Quiz on Monday.
The Art of Science 