Saturday, May 23, 2015

Formula Writing AND Naming - Covalent Compounds

If you know your geometry prefixes, you're in luck.


Any two non-metals can combine in a number of ways unlike ionic compounds that have fixed ratios based on the charges. As a result, covalent compounds are identified WITH PREFIXES that indicate the amount of each specific element.

Formula Writing - Ionic Compounds

One thing that I find surprising is that usually a short amount of time is spent on going over formula writing - at least in the districts I've experienced. The amount of time that it takes for students to pick up on the patterns of formula writing varies greatly and the future topics that focus on formula writing are ones that branch out to a lot of other topics.

- Reaction Types
- Reaction Prediction
- Solutions

Needless to say, it makes things easier to learn it right the first time. 

Formula writing is the practice of writing the chemical formula from the name of a compound and ionic compounds follows a mathematical pattern. To discern this, you need to know the general charges of the main group elements:

Now this should've been covered in earlier material that covered valence, ions, and ionization energy, but for the purposes of this topic, we'll condense that. 

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Tutoring: One time vs. Regular sessions

Given that summer is approaching, this is probably the best time to assess if your student/child/young adult will need tutoring for the upcoming year.

My tutoring clientèle fall generally into two categories:
  • one time sessions
  • weekly/routine sessions over time

Friday, March 22, 2013

Perfume is Amazing

This most recent episode RuPaul'd Drag Race featured a perfume challenge.

Jinkx is my favorite.
This episode warmed my heart primarily because I did something very similar with my chemistry students my first year teaching.