Hey Y’all, Max here.
Scimatics 9 has just finished the project Chemistry Stories. During the project, we learned a variety of chemistry concepts and then applied everything we learned to make an animation about a story that features chemistry concepts, and a complete voice-over to explain the scientific stuff.
We started this project in the last 2 weeks before winter break. The project was timed poorly because it ended up lasting a little less than three months, November, December, and January.
Regardless, I still found this a fun project, and something a bit easier to take my mind off of other PLP work. In the first half of the project, it was mostly about workbooks and learning the basic concepts of chemistry, such as how to read a periodic table and how to distinguish a metal from a non-metal.
The most fun part of the project was animating the final product. I put a lot of work and effort into it, and I am proud of the result. Artistically, that is. I feel like I could do a lot more scientifically to improve, but I was out of time so I had no choice but to hand it in. I included the main things in the criteria, the covalent bond and the ionic bond, but I feel like I left out a few things that could have made it more interesting, or could have potentially given me a higher mark. If nothing else, I’m most proud that I was able to incorporate Master Chief and Doom Slayer into my project.
As for the curricular competencies-
Questioning and predicting: I developed an interest not so much in the scientific parts of this project as I did with the technical parts, by which I mean the animation. I enjoyed using keynote magic move, despite there being better applications to animate with.
Communicating: I believe I made the scientific process in the animation clear, yet there is a definitive line for improvement. I believe that with more time I could make a much better animation.
Processing and analyzing: There wasn’t a whole lot to analyze in this project, but I think that the first weeks of the project where we mostly attempted to understand what we were studying is an example of this competency. By using workbooks and similar materials, we were able to effectively learn the basics of what was to become our final product.
The driving question for this project is: “How do the electron arrangements of atoms determine the chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds”
This is one of those questions that can’t be answered by writing a lot and hoping you are correct, so I’ll keep it brief. The electron is the negatively charged particle on the outed of the atom, which basically balances the positive energy of the protons. The number of electrons then influence and effect the chemical properties of the atom, which can be observed with the naked eye.
Overall, I think I enjoyed this project, and it was a nice break from the nonstop workflow of PLP.
I will link my final chemistry video below. ( It is very low resolution )