The "candium" samples prepared by the teacher are all set up with an equal number of Smarties and Skittles for each group, but the mini chocolate chips are measured by the spoonful and may vary somewhat in quantity from group to group. Groups of about 3 students are given a food-safe container filled with a sample of the element "candium," which has three possible isotopes - today's being the Smarties isotope, the Skittles isotope, and the candy-coated-mini-chocolate-chips isotope. I can't take credit for this activity, nor am I sure who originally came up with it, but here is a link to my version of the handout since the other teacher of the course this semester doesn't have a problem with my sharing it with you. At my new school, though, we do things slightly differently: we give the kids candy. Ok, well, reaching back to one of the driving motivations I mentioned in my first post in this challenge, is there a way to make the concept of relative atomic mass more tactile and visual for students - to help them get their hands on it, so to speak? The students' textbook includes a lab exercise that uses pennies from various years to find the relative average mass of a penny, and I remember there being a tray of pennies in the desk of a former department head that could be used to run that lab. Is there any topic more fascinating that the calculation of relative atomic mass? Anything more scintillating than working out those weighted averages? Yes, plenty, and it's not a topic that grade 11 chemistry students seem to actually understand well. See my first entry here for some context and a little more information about the challenge. This is my fourth entry in Andrew Swan's 20-over-30 September #flipblogs challenge. Originally published at Flipping With Joy
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