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231H_Chapters1_2

Learning Goals:  Chapters 1 and 2

Note:  Chapters 1 and 2 largely cover material that should be review from high school chemistry.

 

  1. You are familiar with measurements in SI units (kg for mass, m for distance, K for temperature) and can perform conversions from and to "English" units of measure commonly used in the United States.
  2. You recognize the impact of experimental uncertainty on how measurements need to be reported.
  3. You can correctly use significant figures and rounding in calculations to report results.
  4. You understand density as an important intrinsic property of a material, and can use the density of pure materials to arrive at the density of a mixture.  You can also use the density of the mixture to ascertain its composition if the constituents are known.
  5. You know at least one definition of an element.
  6. You can distinguish the terms element, chemical compound, and mixture.
  7. You understand how to demonstrate several core principles in chemistry:  conservation of mass, constant composition (or definite proportion), and the law of multiple proportion.
  8. You know that a mole is 6.02214 x 1023 (Avogadro's number) of anything.  
  9. You know that a mole of any element will weigh, in grams, a number identical to the atomic weight of that element.
  10. You know at least one experiment that can be used to determine Avogadro's number.
  11. You can describe experiments that revealed the composition of the nuclear atom:  protons and neutrons in a small nucleus, and electrons in a cloud surrounding the nucleus.
  12. You can describe two experiments that demonstrate the existence of atoms.
  13. You recognize how the model of the nuclear atom explains the form of the Periodic Table and helps define atomic number as a defining property of  an element.  You recognize several consequences:  the definition of atomic mass and atomic weight, existence of isotopes, and the balance between the number of protons and the number of electrons.

 

Links:

Lavoisier's "Elements of Chemistry" (translation; Project Gutenberg)

Crystal structure of silicon, determined by X-ray diffraction

AFM image of graphite at atomic resolution

 

Demonstration of magnetic deflection of an electron beam in a cathode ray tube

Demonstration of Rutherford's gold foil experiment

How a mass spectrometer works

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