Friday, January 16, 2009

Big Ass Atoms

SUCCESS!
and a little ego-horn tooting too

Over Winter Break I was trying to find a good way to help my students get the Periodic Table of Elements (about 15% of the California Standards Test Science section is on the Periodic Table).

One afternoon I was fixing dinner. A modest meal of beans and rice. All of a sudden an inspiration hit.

Make model atoms -- use beans for the nucleus and rice for the electrons. Nice and tactile (teacher talk) and bizarre enough to be memorable (OK, not very accurate scale-wise, but that's an easy cover).

But how to make this more than just playing with food? And just how can I get the Periodic Table into the equation?

I toyed with the idea for a while -- making piles of beans and rice on construction paper. Then it came to me -- have the kids make model atoms, but they have to use the information from the PT.

That was it. Genius -- Wile E. Coyote level genius if I do say so myself.

Add a card with the information for an element - symbol, atomic number, average mass, etc. The student has to work out how many protons, neutrons and electrons -- and put the electrons in proper shells. Also identify metal, semi-metal, or non-metal, & state.

White beans became protons. Black beans became neutrons. Rice represented the shell, and small pasta shells became electrons.

We did the whole thing today -- and they all got it. Protons = the atomic number (check). Neutrons = atomic mass minus atomic number (check). Electrons = same as number of protons (no ions today, thankyouverymuch). Shells -- only two electrons in that inner shell (check) and fill the others with eight before building the next one (check).

And only a small amount of protons, neutrons and electrons found there way onto the stairs outside the room.


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