Chemical Compounds

Unit overview

For students to learn the properties of chemical compounds. They will determine the importance of certain chemical compounds that are used in everyday life. The students will to identify characteristics of certain chemical compounds and have an understanding of how they are used throughout the world.

Personal Unit Overview: What did you achieve this unit?

I feel like during this Unit, I really improved my lab reports, as I really payed more attention that usually, to whether all the required information was included, reread it several times etc.

Enduring Understandings: Chemical Formulas

A chemical formula is the formula for a chemical compound (a group of atoms). It proportionally represents the number of atoms in a molecule. For example, the chemical formula H2O tells you that for each 2 hydrogen atoms, there is one oxygen and vice versa. This is also related to percent mass, which needs to be calculated and indicates how many percent of the molecule each element / atom makes up.

Reflection on Standards

Strength

Applies mathematical representations to chemical compounds

Explanation

This I found very easy during the Unit, as I enjoy Math. I was easily able to calculate percent mass for different molecules.

Weakness

Develops writing literacy in Science

Explanation

Writing literacy in science is something we have never done in the previous years, so consequently this area needs a lot of improvement. In the next quarter, I could try reading other people’s work and take notes in order to improve my own scientific writing skills.

Evidence of Learning

Elements around the school

We had to scout around the school in order to find 20 different things that contain chemical compounds, identify pictures and take a picture of it. This was in order to understand how chemical compounds are litteraly everywhere.

Recipe Lab

In this lab we created chemical formulas that represented recipes. We designed a system for creating formulas. We had to measure and calculate the formula to calculate the formula while using a series of unit conversions to balance the relative amounts of each ingredient.