AACT Multimedia Resources with Cross-Disciplinary Concepts: Connections to Physics

AACT offers its members many classroom lesson plans, activities, labs, demos, and multimedia resources that will help teachers to make interdisciplinary connections for their students in specific content areas. In our first four posts we explored the links between geology & earth science, biology, the environment, and physics with chemistry. Now we’ll take a look at some multimedia resources that connect chemistry with physics.

Multimedia Resources: Founders of Chemistry Video Series –
This video series allows viewers to travel back in time to explore the lives of the most influential men and women in chemistry.

• Ancient Chemistry – This video series allows viewers to travel back in time to explore the lives of the most influential men and women in chemistry.
• Marie Curie – This video tells the story of Marie Curie, including her Nobel Prizes, radiation experiments, and discovery of new elements. Irene Curie is also mentioned.
• Ernest Rutherford – Rutherford’s initial research was studying alpha particles. With the help of Hans Geiger, Rutherford conducted the gold foil experiment, which justifies that the nucleus of an atom is a dense collection of protons and the majority of an atom’s mass and electrons are not part of the nucleus.
• Robert Doyle – This video tells the story of Robert Boyle, a great chemist and discoverer of Boyle’s Law, and it describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas.

Multimedia Resources: Animations –
Each animation in this series can be used to help students make connections between macroscopic observations and the particulate phenomena that explain them.

• Galvanic Cell – In this animation, students will visualize electrons traveling through a galvanic cell. Copper and zinc are the chemicals depicted in the spontaneous reaction and the importance of the salt bridge is highlighted.
• Orbitals – In this animation, students will visualize how orbitals are superimposed upon one another within an atom, in three dimensions. The orbitals depicted in this animation are 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, and 3d.
• Atomic and Ionic Radii – In this animation, students will have an opportunity to visualize atomic and ionic radii. They will look at the different sizes of atoms in the third period and the atoms in the sixth group. They will also look at an atom and its cation as well as an atom and its anion.

Multimedia Resources: Simulations –
To take advantage of its digital delivery platform, each issue of Chemistry Solutions features a simulation and an accompanying lesson.

• Comparing Attractive Forces – In the November 2014 issue, students explore the different attractive forces between pairs of molecules by dragging the “star” image. In the accompanying activity, students investigate different types of intermolecular forces (London dispersion and dipole-dipole). In the analysis that follows the investigation, they relate IMFs (including hydrogen bonding) to physical properties (boiling point and solubility).
• Exciting Electrons – In the March 2015 issue, students explore what happens when electrons within a generic atom are excited from their ground state. They will see that when an electron relaxes from an excited state to its ground state, energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
• Heating Curve of Water Simulation – In the May 2015 issue of Chemistry Solutions, students explore the heating curve for water from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. This middle or high school activity allows students to compare illustrations of each physical state depicted on the curve and calculate the energy required to transition from one state to another.
• Periodic Trends (Ionization Energy, Atomic Radius, Ionic Radius) – In this simulation for the March 2016 issue, students can investigate the periodic trends of atomic radius, ionization energy, and ionic radius. By choosing elements from the periodic table, atoms can be selected for a side by side comparison and analysis. Students can also attempt to ionize an atom by removing its valence electrons. Quantitative data is available for each periodic trend, and can be further examined in a graph.
• Periodic Trends (Electron Affinity, Atomic Radius, Ionic Radius) – The May 2016 simulation is a follow-up to the March 2016 simulation. Students will focus their investigation on the electron affinity of an atom. Through the use of this simulation students will have the opportunity to examine the formation of an anion as well as compare the atomic radius of a neutral atom to the ionic radius of its anion.