Compounds and Molecules Overview

Context

All physical matter is made up of atoms. The study of chemistry is a study of how atoms rearrange themselves to make new substances and how the atoms and new substances interact with each other. In this module we will focus a lot on the electron because electrons determine if atoms will stay together. Two of the most important categories of substances, ionic compounds and molecules, will be thoroughly explored. Many bases are ionic compounds and acids are molecules that sometimes behave like compounds, so we will also discuss acids and bases in this module.

Relevancy

Many everyday observations can be explained with these fundamental chemical principles. Here are a few:

Charged rods can attract neutral objects.
A charged rod strongly attracts water and weakly attracts oil.
Each element has a unique set of colors associated with it.
Salt water conducts electricity, but sugar water doesn’t.
Oil doesn’t separate from water because of density.

Knowing the basic chemical principles of this module is also prerequisite to understanding the rest of chemistry and specifically the content that will be explored in the rest of the course.

The Plan and Specific Tasks

Read the first content page, "Matter and Elements", taking down notes of things that you would like to ask questions about.
Take the pre-quiz for this page. Some of the quiz questions might clarify the questions from the reading, but they may also bring up new questions.
Write down all of your questions so you can bring them to the next face-to-face class. If you can't wait, email Dr. Burgess with your questions.
Do 1-3 for the second content page.
Continue until all of the content pages for the section have been completed.
During class, ask your questions.
After class, complete the graded quizzes for each page and the section quiz over the whole section.

Learning Objectives

Each webpage has specific learning objectives in the "Explanation" section of the page.

Click on "Next" to continue.