if i have to teach the concept of chemical bonding to students,what examples from real life can i correlate?

Question

to this topic. also regarding ionization,electron affinity & electronegativity what examples from real life can i give to students so that students can easily understand

Answer 1

This will depend upon the age of the students.

For young children, the concept of putting a train together from individual car often works. Also mountain climbers with their safety rope or sky divers or swimmers holding hands can give good ideas.

The concepts regarding electron transferring and sharing is easily modeled by having the students toss a ball (electron) for ionization or both grab a ball (sharing). Electron affinity & electronegativity can be discussed as how much each wants the ball and how strongly they hold onto it.

Older students should be taught that the electrons are not balls but clouds. A bond is the joining of two clouds to form a larger cloud.

Answer 2

Faria it depends upon the class u r teaching, I guess u r teaching first year science student chapter number four (chemical bonding) if i m right. Anyways try to start with very begining like i use to start with the concept of bond ...I start with the defination of bond and give an example of common bond(glue) and tell my student that chemical bond is like a force which bind two or more atoms together.
So do stress on glue example and tell ur student bond bind atoms together like a glue which bond two different objects together.
In ionization tell them in simple way that when energy is provided to an atom eletron is removed from outermost shell and that energy is called ionization potential. You can get more help by sending a direct question to me from the topic you r having problem with.

Answer 3

I don't agree with the first poster. You don't want to merge balls of clay. Whatever this illustrates has nothing to do with what happens when different bonds form.

The problem you have to face is that there is little in "real life" (which is no more real than chemistry) that the student is familiar with that would be a useful analogy. Also, all analogies would imply things that would not be true about bonds. So it is not wise to try to use "real life" examples.

It is best to simply divide all bonds up into ionic, covalent, and metallic bonds, and subdivide covalent into polar and nonpolar covalent bonds. Talk about what happens to the electrons when the bonds form. Ionic bonds have a complete transfer of electrons to form cations and anions. Covalent bonds share electrons between two atoms. Metallic bonds share electrons with all other atoms in a "sea of electrons".

Try to get your students to move up to a more abstract level of thinking instead of trying to bring the subject matter down to some visual level of thinking. Schools tend to not talk about abstract thinking but it is very important in mathematics and the sciences.

Answer 4

I think Alan has the right idea in that bonding requires a conceptual understanding since we are considering the interactions of atoms, and we simply cannot 'see' them.

I have always used analogies and the periodic table to teach concepts of bonding, ionization, etc.

Using the octet rule and Bohr models as the basic underpinnings of understanding of how electrons 'act'. I teach college students and I use explain why column IA makes +1 ions by asking students whether it would probably be easier to add 7 electrons or lose 1 to attain octet of electrons. This works really well for all A columns, including IVA. After going through all the other A columns, I get to IVA and explain that C 'can't make up its mind whether to gain 4 or lose 4 (equal E), so it simply makes covalent bonds (shares) rather than make a decision.

Ionization is easily related to 'real life' by dissolving NaCl in water and then contrasting that with adding oil into water, or talcum powder into water (another solid).

Electron affinity can be demonstrated and explained by making simple batteries and using activity series and position of metals on periodic table to explain disappearance of one meatl and appearance of another.

Rust is a common real life example....put a small pice of lithium solid in water to show ionization, etc.

One other great conceptual analogy I have used helps to explain electronegativity etc. just by considering the periodic table; this is where Bohr models come in...draw out Bohr models for several of the column 1A atoms. I use the analogy of each increasing period (and 'layer' of electrins) as distance from the parent (nucleus) and teenager (valence shell) bedrooms....the farther the kid's bedroom from parent's, the less the 'loud music' bothers the parent. This means that the closer the electron to the nucleus (for columns 1-3A) the more likely the atom will 'kick' the electron out.

Similarly, columns V-VIIA can be used to explain why they 'want' electrons...close to being 'perfect' like noble gases. My intro to the periodic table is "all elements in the A columns are 'wanna-be' noble gases" meaning that they will do whatever is easiest to attain noble gas electron arrangement.

One other example form real life comes to mind: antacid to neutralize acid stomach...antacid ionizes to get rid of acid.

Then consider covalent bonding: pick two students of fairly equal stature, and two students that are very different in terms of height. Polar covalent is demonstrated by 'unequal' sharing of electrons between tall and short students, while nonpolar occurs between 'equals'. If you want to model polar vs. non-polar intermolecular bonding, use several groups of students joined polar covalently as water, or nonpolar covalent as a gas.

You can even move on to discuss why intermolecular bonding is so imp: open bottle of nail polish remover (acetone) and compare the strong aroma of this against how long it takes to boil water. Acetone is near BP at room temp due to structure and intermolecular bonding...etc.

Hope this gives you some ideas. I am a firm believer in teaching as much chem as possible using concepts found on periodic table. Help students put themselves in the 'shoes' of an atom!

Answer 5

I've often thought that magnets might explain electrostatic attraction and repulsion pretty well. This might be adapted to cover your other topics (with the probable exception of covalent bonding). You might use the analogy of marriage for that, lol.

Answer 6

u can use coloured clay.
for example to make HCl
take small ball of orange clay to represent Cl and Blue clay for Hydrogen.
Take the 2 balls and press then together to make 1 ball , the colours should be blended together showing that u have got a new ball representing a new substance (MgO)