AACT Resources to Help Teach Chemical Bonding

As chemistry teachers around the country plan activities for their students, AACT will be highlighting resources from our high school resource library that can be used to reinforce topics in different units throughout the school year. Our last post highlighted resources that could be used to support a Periodic Table unit. We will now focus on articles, videos, simulations, and activities that could be used in a Chemical Bonding unit.

Since our original post in November 2017, we have added a few more resources that you might consider trying with your students. Additionally, we have created a unit plan that uses many of our resources to help you teach a unit on Chemical Bonding.

Intermolecular Forces (IMFs)

The newly published demonstration, Intermolecular Forces & Physical Properties allows students to observe and compare the properties of surface tension, beading, evaporation, and miscibility for water and acetone. It can also be used as a student group activity depending upon the materials that you have available. This resource includes alignment with both the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework and NGSS.

If you like to integrate multimedia in your teaching, students can investigate London dispersion and dipole-dipole intermolecular forces with the Comparing Attractive Forces simulation. In the analysis that follows the investigation, they relate IMFs (including hydrogen bonding) to physical properties, such as boiling point and solubility. The simulation was created by the Concord Consortium for AACT using Next-Generation Molecular Workbench software.

Culminating Projects

Do you like to end your unit with a culminating activity? We’ve added two new projects to our Molecules & Bonding resource library. Using Molecular Modeling project, students research a molecule selected from a teacher approved list, construct a three-dimensional model of the molecule, and present their research to the class in a 7-10 minute oral presentation. The Evolution of Materials Science in Everyday Products project connects everyday products to chemistry and helps students understand the progression of development of common items and display their knowledge through a creative video.

We hope that these activities can help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit on Chemical Bonding. Most of these lessons were made possible by great teachers who shared their own resources. We need your help to keep the collection growing. Do you have a great demonstration, activity, or lesson related to this topic that you would like to share with the community? Please send it along for consideration.