Thursday, December 07, 2006
Thursday
Happy extended weekend. The school looks awesome with all of the decorations so next week should be, as Borat says, "very nice". When we come back, we have six more full days of school; and then a li'l day of Christmas cheer, on which I gave a TEST last year, bah humbug! If we accomplish a lot next week, though, then there will not be a test on the day before our extremely long vacation into next year.
AP: I am going to try to video blog that last explanation since, as Josh figured out, I forgot to include among the orbitals the extra electron that makes nitrate an ANION! Actually, there is a subtle fact that needs to be seen in order for the explanation to make sense. The bottom line is that, though I want you to understand what is going on with orbital hybridization, the detailed explanation of the electrons rearrangement from atomic orbitals to hybrid orbitals is beyond the scope of the AP exam. Whatever is relevant, important, and practical, I will reiterate and give many more examples. The concept of "delocalized pi bonding" is important and, fortunately, is easy to explain and draw out.
This weekend, I hope to post the link to the video or, at least, to a written explanation/diagram.
Honors: We added a few ends to the Periodic Table unit such as naming the recently discovered d and p block heavy elements according to the IUPAC (international union of pure and applied chemists) nomenclature rules. We also talked about some chemical properties of fluorine.
We showed the formation of ionic bonds and compounds; we also learned how to draw the Lewis dot diagrams of atoms. These diagrams show the valence electrons around an atom; our diagrams are a little more sophisticated than those that you will find in many textbooks because we pair the first two electrons in the structure of each atom; that shows that the first two valence electrons are in the same "s" orbital.
I finished grading the Thanksgiving assignments and most of you did very well. It is disturbing, though, that a handful of you handed in HALF of the assignment (you weren't paying attention in class AND you do not read all of these posts). Some of you didn't follow directions and therefore missed credit on some questions. Worse, some of you cannot copy VERBATIM electron configurations out of a Reference Table or the textbook. That lack of effort, if it does not radically change, will kill your average for the quarter and beyond.
Regents: we had a brief quiz, which I reviewed for instant feedback.
Then, we talked mainly about covalent bonding, which is the sharing of electron pairs between two atoms (nuclei). There are two types of covalent bonds: polar and NONpolar. If the electrons are about equally shared, no electric poles develop, so the bond is nonpolar. If the electrons are NOT equally shared, a partial negative charge develops on the more electronegative atom and a partial positive charge develops on the less electronegative atom forming a POLAR covalent bond.
Regarding this, homework and worksheets will be posted tomorrow.
AP: I am going to try to video blog that last explanation since, as Josh figured out, I forgot to include among the orbitals the extra electron that makes nitrate an ANION! Actually, there is a subtle fact that needs to be seen in order for the explanation to make sense. The bottom line is that, though I want you to understand what is going on with orbital hybridization, the detailed explanation of the electrons rearrangement from atomic orbitals to hybrid orbitals is beyond the scope of the AP exam. Whatever is relevant, important, and practical, I will reiterate and give many more examples. The concept of "delocalized pi bonding" is important and, fortunately, is easy to explain and draw out.
This weekend, I hope to post the link to the video or, at least, to a written explanation/diagram.
Honors: We added a few ends to the Periodic Table unit such as naming the recently discovered d and p block heavy elements according to the IUPAC (international union of pure and applied chemists) nomenclature rules. We also talked about some chemical properties of fluorine.
We showed the formation of ionic bonds and compounds; we also learned how to draw the Lewis dot diagrams of atoms. These diagrams show the valence electrons around an atom; our diagrams are a little more sophisticated than those that you will find in many textbooks because we pair the first two electrons in the structure of each atom; that shows that the first two valence electrons are in the same "s" orbital.
I finished grading the Thanksgiving assignments and most of you did very well. It is disturbing, though, that a handful of you handed in HALF of the assignment (you weren't paying attention in class AND you do not read all of these posts). Some of you didn't follow directions and therefore missed credit on some questions. Worse, some of you cannot copy VERBATIM electron configurations out of a Reference Table or the textbook. That lack of effort, if it does not radically change, will kill your average for the quarter and beyond.
Regents: we had a brief quiz, which I reviewed for instant feedback.
Then, we talked mainly about covalent bonding, which is the sharing of electron pairs between two atoms (nuclei). There are two types of covalent bonds: polar and NONpolar. If the electrons are about equally shared, no electric poles develop, so the bond is nonpolar. If the electrons are NOT equally shared, a partial negative charge develops on the more electronegative atom and a partial positive charge develops on the less electronegative atom forming a POLAR covalent bond.
Regarding this, homework and worksheets will be posted tomorrow.
# posted by C @ 4:49 PM 
