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. 

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

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.

Stoichiometry

I've been getting a lot of tutoring inquiries lately. The first thing I ask is "what is your son or daughter having issues with?" Predominantly, it's been some variation on the word "stoichiometry."

Stoichiometry is a matter of translating amounts of one substance into another.

Example: If I have 6 pounds of ripe bananas, how many loaves of banana bread can I produce?

Observe that you're translating the amount of bananas into banana bread. Stoichiometry is the same concept. What you do need is a conversion factor. Say that per one loaf of banana bread, you need 2 lbs of bananas.

Here's how that example would play out:

BB stands for banana bread. The main thing I want you to observe is the set up of the conversion factor. The lbs of bananas are on the bottom so they can cancel units with the original given. On the top of the conversion factor is the loaf of BB because that is what we want left, and that is what we want to figure out. 

Now lets move on to some harder problems