In this lesson students have a chance to demonstrate mastery of reaction rates and equilibrium by taking a big quiz. Students also are introduced to nuclear chemistry by reading an article, performing vocabulary, and watching two videos.
To begin this lesson I have students take a big quiz related to reaction rates and equilibrium.
The quiz takes students about 20-30 minutes, and after I have collected all of the quizzes I go over the answers which takes about 10 minutes.
After I have reviewed the answers to the quiz I give students time to finish up the article and the vocabulary that they had started after the quiz. This is the article and this is the paper where they record their answers.
The article comes from ChemMatters Magazine and is about how elements are formed in stars. I feel that this is a great introduction article for students because it shows them the importance of nuclear reactions.
This is a copy of the article with the place where the answers can be found indicated.
For the vocabulary I have students use their textbook (Glencoe Matter and Change) so I have the pages where the vocabulary can be found indicated.
After about 15 minutes I stop students from doing this activity and let them know that if they were not able to complete it in class that they should finish on their own for homework or during SMI time.
I then ask students to share out what they learned in the article. I call on several students and get answers like, "elements come from the stars", "there are nuclear reactions in the sun", and "stars explode and spew elements out into space".
This is a copy of the answer key. This is a copy of one student's answers.
For the last part of the lesson I show students two different videos to introduce them to nuclear chemistry. As students watch the videos they fill in answers on their unit 10 Nuclear Chemistry Introduction videos paper.
The first video is a Bill Nye Video which reviews the parts of the atom. For this video it is the first 6:40 that I show.
The second video that I show is one that was put out by General Electric in the 1950's to inform the public about nuclear chemistry.
I pause the video periodically to allow students to answer the questions.
Here is a copy of the answer key for the video questions, and this is a copy of one student's work.