Learning Paths
Each learning path is one chapter: a guided route through a topic, one small course at a time. Pick a class to see its chapters in order.
Chapter 2Contains Standard content
Quantum Mechanical Model of the Atom, Subatomic Particles and Atomic Models, Light, Atomic Spectra and the Bohr Model, Electronic Configuration and Valency, Isotopes and Isobars
A sodium street lamp glows yellow, and a neon sign glows red. The light comes from the atoms themselves, and each kind of atom gives its own colours. How can an atom tell us what it is like inside? In this chapter we follow the experiments that gave us the nucleus. Then we read the light of hydrogen, and we meet Bohr's model, the waves of matter and the orbitals. At the end we can write the electron configuration of any atom. Python helps us with the calculations.
4 courses
Chapter 4
Isotopes and Isobars, Subatomic Particles and Atomic Models, Electronic Configuration and Valency
In the last chapter the atom was the smallest piece of an element that we counted. But is the atom really the end of the road? In this chapter we open it up. We meet the three particles inside it, and we follow the experiments that gave us the nucleus. We learn how the electrons are arranged in shells, why this decides how an atom combines with others, and why two atoms of the same element can have different masses. Python helps us with the counting.
3 courses
Chapter 9Contains Standard content
Development of the Periodic Table, Periodic Trends, Groups and Families, Electronic Configuration and Valency
There are more than a hundred elements. How can anyone remember them all? A chemist does not. A chemist reads the periodic table, a chart that puts each element where its properties are easy to guess. In this chapter we see how the first lists were made, how Mendeleev left gaps for elements that nobody had found, and how the modern table is built on the electrons of an atom. Then we use the table to predict size, valency, reactivity and the nature of oxides. Python helps us to test the patterns.
4 courses