Blog Reflection; Week of 10/27/13

Blog Reflection by Raymond Zhao

In the past week, we dived deeper into bonds.This included learning about the special properties of the bonds like melting points and strength. Also, the unique properties of ice were taught from models about skating. Another important idea was the types of bonds: Network covalent bonds and metallic bonds. Network bonds is when atoms are held together by a lattice of covalent bonds. The electrons are held in place and cannot move. In a metallic bond, it is basically a group of nuclei surrounded by a sea of mobile electrons. Also, I learned about van der waals forces. There are dipole dipole forces, london dispersion forces, and hydrogen bonds.  Dipole dipole forces is when the the molecules connect a positive end to the negative end so it must be polar. London Dispersion forces occur between non polar molecules. LDFs are not very strong. Hydrogen bonds are like dipole dipole even more strong. The pogils and packets and the book all really helped my understanding of bonds. I really liked how the packets take me step by step and If I have a question I can ask my table group.

All these ideas about ionic bonds can be connected by the different ideas I learned already like the different charges or the periodic trends. The earlier lectures and activities all greatly help me come to a understanding of the ideas this week because it established a good base for it. Thus, I rate the difficulty regarding last week about a 7/10. This is because it was challenging, but not such much that it can't be learned. I still wonder why hydrogen bonds and LDF work because they don’t make too much sense to me.Since that this my only question from last week, I'd say that my understanding is 9.5/10.

    Likewise, my participation was a good 9.5/10 too. I asked question and actively learned. Because of my good participation, my understanding was good.

    I feel fairly confident in memorization capabilities for learning bonds.  But, I still need to work on memorizing on all the visualizations because I sometimes forget. For example, I don’t really get the sea of electrons too much. The concepts taught in last week have made me feel more confident about covalent bonds. I now know the concepts a lot more clearly and I know how to find all the important properties.

    Overall, the past week has been great. I learned a lot. Activities such as worksheets and white boarding greatly helped my understanding and development. I loved the time with groups to work together because it allowed interaction with each other. I feel like this helped me the most.