TEACHING RESOURCES INFORMATION
TITLE OF TEACHING RESOURCE
Química molecular e Substâncias Iónicas (Molecular Chemistry and Ionic substances)
NAME OF AUTHOR(S)
Ricardo Sousa Rodrigues
TYPE OF PRODUCT
Web Site/Portal, Simulations
LEVEL OF CHEMISTRY KNOWLEDGE
Basic, Medium
SUBJECT AREA
Fundamental Chemistry
TARGET GROUP LEVEL
Lower Secondary School
LANGUAGE/S OF TEACHING RESOURCES
Portuguese
DESCRIPTION
This resource can be used at an introductory course of Chemistry as it illustrates basic concepts related to the formation of molecules and ionic substances. It is constituted by two programs:
1. Molecular chemistry
This program helps to demonstrate the formation of molecular substances and write the chemical formulas. Six elements are available: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine and sulphur.
The start menu has five options:
- Free representation (the user can connect the atoms, using a simple ball and stick model).
- Learning (a small theoretical text is available for introducing the topic of writing molecular formulas)
- Practice (a number of questions of quick answer are available, with immediate correction).
- Test knowledge (the results are evaluated at the end)
- Colour selection (the user can assign a colour to each type of available atoms).
2. Ionic substances
This program helps to demonstrate the formation of ionic substances and write their chemical formulas. It is accompanied by a downloadable user’s manual, written in Portuguese. The start menu has three options:
- Choose ions. After selecting one cation and one anion from a list, a screen appears with the representation of the ions, their name and chemical symbol, the name of the resulting substance and the electric charge of particles. Ions can be dragged to the centre of the screen to help “constructing” the substance. Its chemical formula can also be written in a box and the program corrects it.
- Practice.
In this option, the program randomly selects ions.
- Find the formula.
This activity consists in a test to discover the chemical formulas of twelve different ionic substances, with increasing degree of difficulty. The correction of the test is available.
Both programs can be used by the teacher in the classroom or by the student to practice at home.
COMMENTS
This resource is user-friendly with a very simple design and organization. It proposes many interactive exercises that can be easily used by students not only in the classroom but also at home as it provides a correction to the given answers. The molecular and ionic models are simple representations but they can be very useful at an early stage of a Chemistry course when students start learning to write chemical formulas.
NAME OF THE REVIEWING ORGANISATION
Instituto Politécnico de Bragança
Comments about this Publication
Your comments are welcome
Date: 2013.01.22
Posted by Ana Martín Lasanta (Spain)
Message: I do not find it useful. I think this program is very confusing. It makes clear the valences of the atoms (simple size differences in the areas have been enough), it is very difficult to understand what does each year, the questions are absurd (eg sulfur Tell me how many you see? Reply well just depends if you read and the colors. chemical Nothing.).
And I think that it can´t increase the interest of students towards chemistry. It looks old and hard to understand. I think it confuses to the students. Molecular models of balls and rods are self-explanatory and useful.
The idea is good. a program to build virtual molecular models. But there are many other better made (taking into account the hybridization of atomic orbital, for example).
