Unit 4: Chemical Compounds and Reactions – Ch. 7-9

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INTRODUCTION: Every academic discipline or field of study has its own specific vocabulary and its own set of technical words.  Chemistry is no different.  As we learn Chemistry this year you will learn many new words, which have specific meaning to the chemist.  An important group of words, which you will learn in this unit, are the chemical names for elements and compounds.  These names contain a significant amount of information about the compounds, specifically the whole number ratio of types of atoms, which make up the compound.  There are two basic types of compounds, ionic and covalent.  The elements in these compounds are bound together.  There are two so-called types of bonding, ionic and covalent.  Actually these types are two extremes on a continuum of degree of interaction between the electrons of one atom and the nucleus of the other atom to which it is bonded.  Bonding between atoms occurs by the balance of the attractive forces between the positive nuclei of atoms and the electron clouds of other atoms.  When the attraction of one atom’s nucleus for electrons of another atom is so strong that electrons are, in essence, transferred between them, a bond forms between the two oppositely charged ions; hence this bond is called “ionic.”  When the two bonding atoms have an equal or close to equal attraction for the bonding electrons, covalent bonding takes place.  In this unit we will examine both ionic and covalent bonding, as well as properties of each of these types. 

Once we can interpret the compounds in our chemical equations we can seek to interpret chemical reactions.  Chemistry isn’t interesting until we observe and understand chemical reactions.  There are a vast number of chemical reactions.  In Chapter 9 we will encounter a small number of these.  We will observe them and discuss them.  Because there are so many reactions it is helpful to categorize and classify some of these reactions.  We will learn about several general classifications for various types of chemical reactions.  These chemical reactions are written in chemical equations, which are a shorthand description of the transformation of the reaction components.  Chemical equations contain a significant amount of information about the chemical reactions that they describe.  For example a balanced chemical equation tells a chemist about the ratio of reacting substances to products formed.  From the chemical equation a chemist can determine precise amounts of chemicals to use in order to complete the reaction.  This quantitative step we will save for the next unit.  But by the end of this unit you should have a basic understanding of the chemical reaction, and its component compounds.

OBJECTIVES:  As you study this unit, you should be able to do the following:

  1. Describe the formation of a cation from an atom of a metallic element and of an anion from a nonmetallic element, using the octet rule and the importance of noble-gas electron configurations.  (7-1)

  2. Differentiate between ionic and molecular substances by means of their respective properties.  (7-1 & 7-2)

  3. Describe the formation of an ionic bond, and of single, double and triple covalent bond.  (7-1 & 7-2)

  4. Differentiate between an ionic compound and a molecular compound based on the name or the formula. (7-3)

  5. Write the chemical formulas for binary and ternary ionic compounds from the name and write the name given the formula.  (7-3)

  6. Write the chemical formulas for binary molecular compounds from the name and write the name given the formula.  (7-3)

  7. Identify by name and write formulas for common acids.  (7-3)

  8. Create electron dot diagrams for covalent molecules containing single, double, and triple bonds.  (7-2)

  9. Categorize a bond as non-polar covalent, polar covalent, or ionic using electronegativity values, and show the relationship between polar covalent bonds and polar molecules. (7-2 & 8-2)

  10. Describe the shapes of simple covalent molecules using VSEPR theory.  (8-1)

  11. Identify the reactants and products in a chemical reaction.  (9-1)

  12. Apply the rules for balancing equations when given the names or formulas of all the reactants and products in a chemical reaction.  (9-2)

  13. Identify a combination, decomposition, single-replacement, double-replacement, and combustion reactions.  (9-3)

  14. Be able to predict the products of a combination, decomposition, single-replacement, double-replacement, or combustion reaction, given the reactants.  (9-3)

  15. Use the activity series of metals to predict whether a single-replacement reaction will occur.  (9-3)

LEARNING ACTIVITIES:

This first set of activities will be covered during the weeks of Nov. 8 and Nov. 15.

To learn about objectives 1-7(Compound types, names and formulas):

For objectives 8-10 complete the following activities by TBA (Lewis Structures and molecular structure):

For objectives 11-15 complete the following activities by.

To make sure you understand the objectives for this unit:

PROPOSED DUE DATES: