Week 26

Week 26 was probably the most in-depth weeks we've had all year. We began by starting our work with the transition metals and how to find their charge by using the compound that they're in. We found that if we determined the charge of the nonmetal in the compound, and divided it by the number of metal atoms, we'd find the positive charge of the transition metal. With this knowledge, we began our work with advanced ionic compounds. A polyatomic ion is an ion made of more than one nonmetal atom. There were 9 of these polyatomic ions that we were asked to memorize for our assessment. Polyatomics add the suffix "-ate" to any compound it's involved in(as long as there's an oxygen), such as sulfate, phosphate, or carbonate. We got a lot of time to work on chemquests and skill practices so that we could master the naming and writing formulas for these. Then we moved to all little practice with acids. Acids are ionic compounds that contain a hydrogen ion. We also did chemquests and skill practices practicing with naming acids. Our last day working on chemquests and skill practices was about transition metals and naming molecular compounds. There were a few distinct transition compounds that we worked with, silver, zinc, and cadmium. With this practice came our further study of ionic vs. molecular compounds. We determined that ionic compounds consisted of a metal and a nonmetal. There is an electron transfer that forms the bond. The molecular compounds, though, are between two nonmetals. The electrons are shared between the two cause the covalent bond. The electrons that are able to be shared in covalent bonds are the furthest from the middle of the atom. These electrons are called valence electrons. When naming molecular compounds we practiced with the same naming system that we used a while ago, using the prefixes such as "mono" and "tri". Finishing the week off, we took an assessment covering mainly the naming and writing formulas for ionic and molecular compounds, and also being able to distinguish between the two. I'm very confident with the assessment and look forward to see where we go next.