Helium Helium Helium | Chemistry Stories, A Scimatics Project

Howdy there, and welcome back to another blog post! Today I am discussing one of the most recent projects that I completed called, Chemistry Stories. This project, was in our scimatics class where we, of course, learned about chemistry and the periodic table and such. After gathering all of this information about chemistry and the periodic table, we basically got to compile it all into a video, but not just any video, an animation! This animation, specifically, was to focus more on ionic and covalent bonds. On this post, I will be reflecting on the core competencies that we were being assessed on in this project.

Driving question: “How do atoms and ions act like characters?” 

The Big Idea of this project was the electron arrangement of atoms impacts their chemical nature. Since we are using Bohr models and not Lewis ones for this project to see the electrons a little clearer in our animated video, this makes a lot of sense. The arrangement of electrons determines wether they will be apart of a covalent or ionic bond.

The first competency that we were being assessed on was Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon. In this case, for our project, these were the voice overs that we had during our video to help explain and make our video more clear. Personally, I think I did a pretty good job in this competency, not just because I just had a voice over but because I explained everything to make it much clearer very well.

The second competency that we were being assessed on was processing and analyzing: construct, analyse and interpret models and/or diagrams. In this case, for our project, this was the animation of electron exchange or sharing in ionic or covalent bonding. This had to include our multivalent metal and polyatomic ion that we chose (mine were copper and chlorate). I think that my representation for this competency was okay. I had the animation for all of that in there, but, I felt that my animation was kind of basic: white background, not a lot of colours and all of that.

The final competency that we were being assessed on in this project was questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. In the case for our project, it was that all class time was used efficiently for learning without distractions. Almost every class, I would be working hard, having my earphones in, no distractions. My problem, was that I kept being unhappy with how the animation turned out for a certain slide, I deleted it and started over again. It wasn’t great because it happened every single time!

To conclude, I really enjoyed learning about chemistry, the periodic table and such because I never really went over it in elementary school other than some small experiments which is basically what I thought it all was till high school. But I didn’t just achieve a better understanding of chemistry, but also of animating. I don’t dislike explain everything nearly as much as I did.

Here is my final video:

Here is my project end mind map: