NOTE TO TEACHERS:

These procedures are written to show you how you might use these technologies to teach science concepts. Suggested questions, approaches, and expected answers are all provided. Therefore, these activity descriptions should be used as a guide for your instructional planning, rather than as step-by-step directions for students.

Getting Started

Chemistry teachers use the study of periodic trends to help students recognize the repeating occurrence of chemical and physical properties of the elements when they are organized in family groups on the periodic table. This "periodicity" allows a chemist to predict properties of elements and make informed choices in designing chemical reactions for specific purposes. While chemistry textbooks frequently include discussions of periodicity for atomic radius, electronegativity and ionization energies, trends also exist for other chemical and physical properties such as melting and boiling points.

Based on your knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the elements, how would you expect melting point and boiling point to vary with increasing atomic number?

To find out, you will graph the melting and boiling points of the elements using a spreadsheet. To begin, open the Excel ChemData file and select Save As from the File menu to save the file using your last name as the filename.

[If you are using a different spreadsheet, you may need to use the text file version of the ChemData.]





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