Chemistry Stories reflection post

We just finished our most recent project for Scimatics, Chemistry Stories, and now it’s time to reflect! This project was about atoms, ions, and a bunch of other complicated stuff. We started out small, with introductions to what they were and worksheets that got progressively harder as we learned more. We did an experiment which involved a cool explosion, and for the end of the project we had to make an animated video explaining the concepts we had learned, like ionic bonds, covalent compounds, and Bohr models to name a few. After we finished the storyboard we made the video itself in an app called Explain Everything, but I used IMovie to record the audio because Explain Everything is a little buggy, especially with audio. But I still managed to get past that issue, and here is my video:

After this was done, we still had a few things left. We did a quiz on what we had learned, and then a test shortly after. The very last thing we did was fill out the answers to the questions we had wrote down at the beginning of the project in our project start mind map, so here is my project end mind map:

Now that we’ve discussed what happened during the project, I can reflect on the core competencies and the big idea. The first thing I will reflect on is the big idea. The big idea was “the electron arrangement of atoms impacts their chemical nature”. After everything I’ve learned, I now understand this, and now that the electron arrangement of atoms does impact their chemical nature, because the number of electrons is a huge factor in bonding, and the whole point of bonding is to try to achieve a full valence shell, which is literally just the most stable electron arrangement, so the arrangement of the electrons pretty much causes bonding itself. Now that we’ve covered the big idea, onto the competencies.

The first competency is Communicating: formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon. I showed this competency when I created the Bohr models in my video to describe atoms and ionic and covalent bonds.

The next competency is Processing and analyzing: construct, analyze and interpret models and/or diagrams. I showed this competency a lot in the video I made, because I constructed a lot of Bohr models, and I had to analyze and interpret them on some of our worksheets and our final test.

The final competency is Questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem or personal interest. I think I did alright in this competency, which is shown through my use of class time, because although I wasn’t the most efficient at the beginning of this project, by the end I had used my class time efficiently enough to complete my video, and do a good job on it as well.

In conclusion, I learned a lot from this project, because although I had limited knowledge of the subject before, by the end of the project I knew all about atoms and ions, covalent and ionic bonds, polyatomic ions, protons, neutrons, and electrons, and more, as well as showing my proficiency in the core competencies and understanding of the big idea.