10/7-10/13: More Lewis Structures

This week was very uneventful in our AP Chemistry class. We used the first few days to finish up our calculations in our lab conducted last week and to review some important material on molecular geometries. From there we completed two more POGILs having to do with hypervalency, formal charges, resonance, and bond order. We finished up the week with a lecture quiz on Polarity and some more review on how to build some of these more complicated Lewis Structures with expanded octets.

Starting the week off right, we continued to learn about molecular geometries by white boarding and completing our VSEPR lab we started the week prior. This lab helped us really further understand the five types of electron domain geometries. These included Linear, Trigonal Planar, Tetrahedral, Trigonal  Bipyramidal, and Octahedral. In these domains were also sub-domains that can be seen in the molecular geometry pictures below. Our knowledge of these domains from this lab also really helped us complete the VSEPR lecture quiz due that night.

Linear and Trigonal Planar

Tetrahedral 

Trigonal Bipyramidal

Octahedral

We continued moving forward, finishing up our calculations from the lab we conducted a week ago. This became very confusing for me because I had not done Stoichiometry in such a long time. But then again, that's why why have lab partners! My partner and I worked through the calculations in no time to finally obtain the mass percent of Cu in that brass screw solution through both the visual method and the method using the calibration curve. From there, each class entered their final results into a google form where our entire class data was averaged and stored.

The next few days took us back to basics with two new POGILs, working on our familiarity with hypervalency, formal charges, resonance, and bond order. These POGILs focused heavily on formal charges and hypervalency in different types of molecules the most. These areas were really stressed and I understood both concepts very well. To top it off, we had another lecture quiz due that night on Polarity. Unlike formal charges and hypervalency, I really struggled with the concept of polarity. I needed to re-watch the lecture(link below) multiple times before I could grasp some of the basic concepts such as the dipole moment.

Polarity Lecture

We finally finished the week off with some more basic review as a class. We went over how to construct the Lewis structures of molecules like BSF and NSF in our table groups and came together as a class at the end to discuss the correct answer. We also found each molecule's formal charge, electron and molecular domain, and even their alternative resonance structures.

Overall, I feel a lot more confident in my knowledge of the information we went over on Lewis structures this week, but I also had quite a bit of trouble with Polarity and the calculations from the brass screw lab. I still need to work on grasping those concepts of Polarity and may need to watch the lecture over again taking notes. My participation this week was pretty good, but I think it was a little down from my participation the week prior. My ideas have really changed on the concept of hypervalency. At first, I had no idea how it worked, nor could I understand how you could just dip into the d-orbital with extra electrons. This process shocked me at first, but like much of this week's concepts, I now believe it is quite simple.