Introduction to my Chemistry Course

For the last few months I have been working through four grade 12 courses in the Ron Paul Curriculum, English 4: American literature, Economics, Physics, and Chemistry. As part of my weekly assignments for English and Economics I write an essay on the topic I covered that week, but for Physics and Chemistry I don’t. So, to help me document and keep track of my progress, I have decided to keep a weekly log of what I have learned each week in Chemistry. This will most likely be very boring for the average reader, but I hope it will be useful for students and potential students of the Ron Paul Curriculum to see what the Chemistry course, taught by Kevin Poff, is like.

Here are the weeks and topics I have covered so far:

Week 1:

Week 1 started the course off with an Introduction to Chemistry, SI units, Dalton’s Atomic Theory, the Scientific Method, Law of Conservation and Mass, and Chemical Formulas.

Week 2:

This week focused on Naming monatomic ions, Polyatomic ions, Binary Molecular Compounds, Greek Prefixes, Acids, Atomic Mass, and Molecular Mass.

Week 3:

In this week the topics covered included; Percent composition, Chemical Equations, Stoichiometry, Reaction yield, and Gases.

Week 4:

This week focused on the Gas Laws, Volume and Amount Relationship, Gas Stoichiometry, and the Kinetic Molecular Theory of Gases.

Week 5:

In week 5 we covered Diffusion and Effusion, Nature and Types of Energy, Heat and Thermochemistry, and an Introduction to Thermodynamics.

Week 6:

In this week covered the concepts of Enthalpy, First Law of Thermodynamics, Work, Thermodynamic Equations, Heat Capacity or Specific Heat, and Hess’s Law Problem.

Week 7:

Week 7 covered Hess’s Law, Enthalpy Formation, the Periodic Table Groups, and review of Enthalpy Changes.

Week 8:

In this week we focused on the Introduction to Solutions, Saturation, Ionic Theory of Solutions, Solubility Rules, and Molecular and Ionic Equations.

Week 9:

Week 9 covered Precipitation Reactions, Acid Base Reactions, Examples of Acids and Bases, Neutralization Reactions, Oxidation-Reduction Reactions, and Oxidization Numbers.

Week 10:

This week focused on Balancing Oxidization Reduction Reactions, Solutions, Quantitative Analysis, Gravimetric Analysis, and Solution Stoichiometry.

Week 11:

In week 11 we focused on the Nature of Lights, the Electromagnetic Spectrum, Quantum Effects and Photons, Bohr’s Atomic Model, and the De Broglie Relation.

Week 12:

This week covered the topics Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg’s Contribution, Quantum Numbers, Orbital Shapes, and Election Configurations.

Week 13:

During this week we covered the topics Diamagnetism and Paramagnetism, Electron Shielding, Hund’s Rule, the Rules for Assigning Elections to Atomic Orbitals, the Rules for Writing Electron Configurations, and the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Week 14:

Week 14 covered the Building Up Principle, Aufbau Principle, Election configurations and the Periodic Table, Mendeleev’s Predictions, and Periodic Properties.

Week 15:

This week focused on Ionization Energy, additional Periodic Properties, Trends in Election Affinity, Periodicity of Main Group Elements, and Ionic Bonds.

And that is where I am this week! I will keep writing a weekly reports and post them here.