Hello readers, and welcome back to my blog. 

Today’s post is about a project I’ve been doing in Scimatics 9, called “Chemistry Stories”.

This project was all about chemistry, and creating an animated video about covalent and ionic bonds.

The driving question in this project was; “How do the electron arrangement of atoms determine the chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds”?

My answer to that is: that the electron arrangement affects whether the atom has a full valence shell or not. The electron arrangement also affects the overall charge of an atom.

To demonstrate my learning in this project, I’ll be highlighting the milestones/stepping stones that helped me answer the driving question best.

The first piece evidence that I’m going to highlight is the “project start mind map”. In this mind map we organized our thoughts and asked questions. We then later answered these questions.

The second piece of evidence that I’ll be highlighting is the textbook and workbook pages. Reading these workbook pages taught me about key chemistry concepts. Learning about these concepts was really important because they were a key part in creating the animated video.

 

The third piece of evidence I’ll be highlighting is the Animation Storyboard. In this storyboard, we layed out what was going into the final animation. 

Here’s what my storyboard looked like:

 

 

This storyboard helped a lot because it was an opportunity for me to receive feedback, and to see what I needed to work on. Mr. Gross noted that in covalent bonding, I needed to elaborate more on the sharing process.

 

The next piece of evidence I’ll be highlighting is Milestone 5, the final animation. To create this animation we used keynote. The goal of this animation was to explain covalent bonding and ionic bonding. A covalent bond is when two non-metals share electrons. An ionic bond occurs when one non-metal, and one metal exchange electrons. *The link to my animation is attached at the top of the post.

 

The curricular competencies in this project were: Communicating, Processing and Analyzing, and Questioning and Predicting.

Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon.

I think I accomplished this skill. My animation had clear voiceovers that explained the bonding processes well. Also, my video had good music and Mr. Gross thought it really enhanced the animation. At the start of this project, I had a preliminary knowledge on keynote animation. However, I learned by watching tutorials and by asking others.

Processing and Analyzing: Construct, Analyze and interpret models and/or diagrams.

I think I accomplished this skill. I explained the ionic bonding process really well, and the animation clarified that process. However, I didn’t do as well on the covalent bonding. I didn’t clarify the sharing in covalent bonding. But, my animation was smooth and showed how the electrons were transferred from each atom. 

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.  

I accomplished this skill. I used my class time well, and I was always on track during the project. At the start of the project I wasn’t all that interested in learning about chemistry. But now that I know the concepts it doesn’t seem that bad.

To summarize, I’m really proud of how I did in this project. At the beginning of the project, I had barely any knowledge about chemistry. However, I now know a lot more. I enjoyed creating the animation, but I think I could’ve enhanced its story a bit better. I think I was too worried about the concepts, that I forgot about creating a good story.