Thursday, 1-7-10: Bond with a Classmate

Borrowed from Liz at Middleschoolscience.com, the kiddos pretended to be ions (charged particles) – cations (positively-charged) or anions (negatively-charged)- and then bonded with a classmate of the opposite charge. We used approximately 24 different commonly seen ions as shown below. Here are some of the combinations. Students learned a lot about bonding, which types of elements become positively-charged and which become negatively charged, and what types of compounds are formed as a result of the bonding.

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This lab was used to reinforce our chemical bonding unit. Not only were the kiddos able to figure out what ions can bond together, they discovered how to write chemical formulas based upon the given combinations, as well as to note the proportion of each element in a given compound given the subscripts produced from the bonding of the various elements.

KEY TERMS ILLUSTRATED: Chemical bonding, ionic bonding, covalent bonding, subscripts, oxidation number, ions- cations and anions, electrical charges, and neutral compounds.

Here is a pdf file of the activity: http://www.middleschoolscience.com/bonding.pdf

And here are the tags: http://www.sciencespot.net/Media/chembond.pdf