Along with each element’s story, these books also contain a colorful drawing of each element, Chemistry vocabulary words, check yourself questions, and resources. All she has to do is push on an element and Atom and her friends are transported to the element’s environment! For example, they travel to a mine in the state of Utah to visit Beryllium, to the village of Strontian in Scotland to visit Strontium, and to the Dead Sea in Israel to visit Bromine. Most of all, Atom and her friends’ adventures are possible thanks to the magical periodic table that Atom receives for her birthday one summer. And, Mole got her name since her big sister is a chemist! By convention, elements are organized in the periodic table, a structure that captures important patterns in their behavior.Devised by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (18341907) in 1869, the table places elements into columnsgroupsand rowsperiodsthat share certain properties. Valence is quite social like the valence electrons that take part in chemical reactions. Endo is always thoughtful and focused on absorbing all the information around her like an endothermic reaction. Exo is always releasing her energy just like an exothermic reaction. Ion is always positive and loves to play with the dog Electron. So, Atom’s pet is a dog named Electron who can always be found in her orbit! In my second and third books which cover the Alkaline Earth metals and Halogens, I introduced Atom’s five friends Ion, Exo, Endo, Valence, and Mole who join in the adventures of meeting the element girls with Atom. I encouraged my students to draw images of concepts along with some text to enhance their understanding.įurthermore, the narrator, Atom, is a girl who loves to explore science, draw, and imagine. Group 1: alkali metals, or lithium familyGroup 2: alkaline earth metals, or beryllium familyGroup 3: the scandium familyGroup 4: the titanium familyGroup 5: the vanadium familyGroup 6. In response to these observations, I started attributing a female personality to each element and would refer to the element as “she.” I also asked the students to picture the elements in their minds and I would roughly sketch the element personalities on the white board and in my notebook and share those images with the students. Is there an engaging, visually stimulating, creative, and fun way to learn about the elements and the periodic table? Students also wondered as to how they would remember the properties of the elements within each family and how one family differs from another.So, is the field of Chemistry male dominated? Is this the impression created in the minds of young girls? Click on the column header to sort the table by that column or click on an element name to get detailed facts about the element. Most elements have been discovered by men, only a handful of elements by women. Heres a list of all of the chemical elements of the periodic table ordered by increasing atomic number.Early on in my career, I made a few observations based on the reactions of my students when I introduced the periodic table of elements to them. I am a 7th grade teacher who has been teaching a semester of physics and a semester of chemistry at the Harker School in San Jose, CA for the last twenty years.
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