Battleship and Relations to the Periodic Table

We had recently learned how to write electron configurations and what they mean about an element. We know that the four quantum numbers are n, l (s,p,d,f), ml, and ms. These represent the principal energy levels, the sublevels, the orbitals, and the electron spin. The configuration, 1s2 2s2 2p6, for example, would be neon (Ne) because if you add the last number of each term (the individual electrons), then the sum is the total electrons; in this case 10. To practice writing these electron configurations, we split up into partners and played electron configuration battleship. Personally I had an intense game with Alex K, who put up a good fight, but in the end, couldn't hold up any longer as I sunk his battleship.

We also learned how to write the abbreviated version of an electron configuration. This involves writing the previous noble gas in brackets, followed by the configuration for just the next period. For example, the abbreviated electron configuration of Iodine (I) would be [Kr] 5s2 4d10 5p5. This is very helpful because the Kr takes care of the majority of the whole electron configuration (without it you would have to write: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p6 5s2 4d10 5p5).

Orbital diagrams were next on dliebs's agenda. These are diagrams that have orbitals of each energy level that contain either an up arrow, a down arrow, or both. The s sublevels have one orbital so each s can hold only 2 electrons. P has 3 orbitals, d has 5 orbitals, and f has 7 orbitals. This means that as you progress from s to f, the number of electrons per sublevel goes up. Also, there is a certain way that electrons fill up an energy level. According to Hund's rule, each sublevel is filled up before another one starts to fill up. This means that 1s will have to be totally filled up before 2s or 2p. Also electrons will fill up so that they will be unpaired rather then paired up with another electron, meaning that each orbital isn't filled up at a time. Instead one-half of each orbital is filled in a sublevel before they are totally filled. After we learned this, dliebs told us that any electron in the top energy level can become "excited", and hypothetically, jump to any higher sublevel. This "excited" state explains why it releases energy, which is translated into light.

Finally we then had to determine how electron configurations and ions relate to the periodic table. Knowing how to interpret an electron configuration correctly will allow you to find any element on the periodic table. Also, ions can easily be explained when relating them to the periodic table and their electron configurations. Every element, wants to have their last energy level completely filled. To achieve this, their p sublevel has to be completely filled, and it can have no more electrons. All the noble gases (the family all the way to the right) have their last energy level completely filled. In this way, every other element wants to do the same, so they either have to gain or lose electrons to achieve their goal. For Na to have a completely filled p sublevel, it is easiest for it to lose one electron and have the same number of electrons as Ne. This why the Na ion looks like Na+, because it gains an electron. This works for many of the main-group elements, but not for the transition metals because they are rebels.

Ya, well I hope this post has been eye-opening and that you can now be a master of not only electron configurations, but also how they and ions relate to the periodic table. Also sorry for the lack of pictures but I wasn't able to take any.

Anyways..........The next scribe will be THE LOVELY, THE RESPECTED, THE MAGNIFICENT (NEED I SAY MORE)

Ethan Spalding

Electron Configuration

Electron configurations is determined by the sublevel energies and the element. An electron configuration is a short hand for showing where certain electrons are located on a certain atom of an element. Electron configuration is the assignment of quantum numbers to each electron in an atom of a given element. Electron configuration shows the number of electrons (which is the exponent or superscript after the letter) in each sublevel. For instance the book gives the example:

1s²2s²2p⁵

^{Which means that there are two electrons in the sublevel 1s and 2 in the sublevel 2s and 5 electrons in the sublevel 2p. This means that this particular element has 9 electrons which means it is Fluorine.}

When it is written as 1s² this refers to the electron being in the region of N = 1.Which means that the only "l" option that is possible is 0 (thats zero not "O" like in oh no!) or "s". Because l is 0 there are only two electrons that can be there, and since the 1s sublevel is full (which it must be to begin filling up the next sublevel) the superscript says two (meaning two electrons). If we continued writing a substance's Electron configuration we could go on for a long time but since this has only 9 electrons it would stop at 2p. Each letter ("s", "p", "d", "f") has a top level of electrons of which more than such it cannot hold. for instance, "s" can only hold 2 electrons maximum, "p" can only hold 6 electrons maximum, "d" can only hold 10 electrons maximum, and "f" can only hold 14 electrons maximum.

So for example when all are full it would look like this:

1s²2s²2p⁶3s²3p⁶3d¹⁰4s²4p⁶4d¹⁰4f¹⁴

^{Which has 60 electrons so this indicates that it would be the element Neodymium.}

^{Electron Configuration is a simple way of writing out the electrons positioning of an element, which is important to know for doing other things, and can tell us a lot about an element.}

^{soooo... yeah. thats Electron configuration,} Electron configuration, Electron configuration, Electron configuration which makes the tenth time I've said Electron configuration... 11 actually. So thats about it we will learn more on monday, i think, i dont actualy plan the lessons but whatever, the next scribe will be: Joshua D-D-D-EIN!!! (said in monster truck rally voice)

thankyou, and farewell, i will see y'all Monday.

CHEM IS COOL

A couple of things to take care of:

Mateo has one "t".

The upside down "y" thing that is a symbol for wavelength is called a "lambda", and the "v" looking thing that is a symbol for frequency is called a "nu". In case you were wondering, which I was.

If you still do not understand the electro-magnetic spectrum, here's a quick song to ingrain it into your brain:

So today, we did some stuff. Like chemistry stuff. Like really complicated electron orbital stuff.

We began with the rather disheartening concept of not really being able to know where a specific electron is at a given point in time. What we do know is that there is a certain area around the nucleus where we will "probably" find the electrons. However, as Kaitlin astutely observed, there is a small small chance one of our poor electrons are lost somewhere, searching desperately for their owner.

From there, we moved on to Quantum Mechanics.

Mr. Lieberman stressed the difference between electron orbits and electron orbitals. In fact, electron orbits don't actually exist. This means that everything you learned about how atoms look is wrong. Everything that our middle school teachers taught us is wrong. And above all, Jimmy Neutron was wrong.

So now that everything you have learned has been upset, we are learning a new way to define an electron's location: orbitals. As stated previously, we cannot know for sure where an electron is in relation to its nucleus, or in relation to anything at all, so scientists decided to create a thing called an orbital. Basically, an orbital is an area where there is great er than a 90% chance of finding an electron. In pictures it looks more like a fuzzy sphere kind of thing. However, Bohr's electron is much more conducive to the imagination and is thus still taught in elementary and middle schools today.

Instead of equating the location of an electron with a sort of solar system looking model, scientists like to look at the location as sort of a seat in a stadium, or concert hall, or auditorium. Except in an altogether different fashion. Tickets typically have four pieces of information on them in regards to where your seat it, the gate you enter in, the section, the row, and the seat. Each one getting more specific, and no two tickets to the same seat.

Much like the ticket analogy, we "locate" electrons with a series of QUANTUM NUMBERS. Each number gets sequentially more specific until we can know the relative energy of the orbital, its shape, its orientation in space, and which direction its spinning.

The first number we must concern ourselves with is the value "n". Thankfully, "n" comes only in integer form (that is, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11...) basically, anything positive that is not a decimal or a fraction. It aids in determining the energy level of the electron; the larger the "n" value, the higher the energy. Unfortunately, we have only really found up to 7, though I guess we are fairly close to obtaining the eighth.

The next number is represented by the letter "l" (thats "L", only lower-case). This, fortunately, also comes in integer values. These are limited however, to a range extending from 0 to n-1. "n", if you recall, is the relative value of the energy of an electron. "l" is the energy sublevel of an electron, sort of like a more accurate way of defining an electron's energy. If you think about it, the number of sublevels is the same as whatever energy level it is in. If that doesn't make sense, the book says it like this:

In the nth principal level, there are n different sublevels.

So scientists think that it would be easier to memorize letters than numbers and gave us this:

sublevel: 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.....

letter : s | p | d | f | g ... and from here it goes on in alphabetical order. Furthermore, when defining a sublevel (using the s-p-d-f system), you put the principal (the n) value before it. So for example, if you were in level 4, sublevel 2, you would have 4d. If you were in level 5 sublevel 6, WAIT THATS NOT POSSIBLE. Its not possible because the sublevel values are confined between n-1 and 0. HA. But if you were in level 5 and sublevel 4, you would say 4g, like sprint.

Next variable: m_l. m_l is also made up of integer values, and its range extends from "l" to -"l". That's positive "l" to negative "l". This defines the orientation of the orbital. The higher the sublevel, the higher the number of orientations. For example, in sublevel 3, you can have m_l values of 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2 , -3. and they all represent different orientations of the electron cloud. Look at this picture if you still don't get it.

The final number is represented by m_s. Basically, it has nothing to do with the other values. It just shows which way the electron is spinning. It either has a value of +1/2 or - 1/2. Or sometimes referred to as "spin up" and "spin down". Each orbital can have 2 electrons, each one spinning a different direction.

This is a fun song, if you are working out, are just walking, or just sitting down, and it has a rather fitting title, considering it's the end of the post.

This is a tough unit, so don't worry if you don't get it right away. I'd be willing to help if you need it.

Anyway, stay awesome period six.

Next scribe is going to be.. peter w.... PPEEUTTUUHHRR DUUUEEHHBBLE-YUEEWW

Noting Wednesday

Hello 6th period friends!

In case you didn't know, we did notes all day today. We learned a lot more about light energy and wavelengths. First, we learned that wavelengths and frequency are indirectly related, so the longer the wavelength, the lower the frequency, and the shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency. We can use the equation λv=c, where λ is in meters/wave, v is in # of waves/second, and c is the speed of light, which is 3x10^8.

Next, we learned about the electromagnetic spectrum which looks like this:



This gives you a nice visual and adds how long each wave is, so that's helpful. We can only see a very small sliver of the spectrum, specifically the rainbow. This is the area that says "visible" in the picture.

After that, we learned about two very interesting scientists who had opposing ideas about where light came from. Max Planck explained that the transfer of energy was not continuous, and that the energy was quantized, like rungs on a ladder. He believed that light came in waves and believed that it could be explained through his formula ΔE=hv where ΔE is the change in energy, h is Plank's constant 6.626x10^-34, and v is velocity.

On the other hand, Albert Einstein believed that radian was made up of a stream of partciles called photons. He did agree that the energy was quantized, though.

Solving the mystery was Louis de Broglie, who applied the wave-particle theory to electrons. There was a "dual nature of light". His equation is λ=h/mv, where λ is the wavelength, h is Planck's constant, m is the intial mass, and v is velocity.

Remember that the energy in a wavelength is QUANTIZED and has to be a whole number!

During this part of the class, Liebs gave us some really cool psychedlic glasses that allowed us to see the light coming off a helium light bulb. This is something like what we saw when we put them on.





We then went on to learn that when an electron has a very high energy drop, this is what causes it to have a high frequency. Liebs demonstrated this by getting up onto the table and then jumping back down. Also, if an electron has a low energy drop, it has a low frequency. This happens at the speed of light and is impossible to see with the naked eye.

Then we learned something truly astonishing. Niels. Bohr. Was. Wrong.

According to Bohr's model of the atom, the electrons moved in orbits around the nucleus, staying on a similar course the entire time. But, if this was true, a loss of energy would cause the electron to spirial toward the nucleus and crash into it. Obviously, this does not happen, as Ben T. pointed out because otherwise, we would be blowing up all the time.

Instead, electrons move in orbitals. They are different from orbits, as each electron moves around in its own cloud. The atom is mostly empty space except for the nucleus and the regions were you would find an electron. The probability of predicting where the electron is is very possible, but no one can predict it exactly accurately, because they are just regions of space. There is about a 90% probabilty of finding an electron, for it is very vague.



That was about all we did today. I would post the notes, but they aren't on slideshare :( But this is about all we did. Also, the first question on the worksheet we got today is for homework, get it here!

Have a nice Wednesday!

The next scribe will be.........Matteo Parque, enjoy!

:)

test

the test will be monday