New Students Start Here!
Click on the link below for a video that will bring you through a quick tour of the course.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with the resources that are found below. The first link is the News Forum - this is where all important class information, such as expected progress will be posted. The next is a list of class links that will prove useful as you go through the course. Make sure you are familiar with the resources that are included there. Especially the online text books, which may come in handy if you need some additional reading.

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All About Chemistry

This first unit truly is all about chemistry! You will be starting off finding out what chemistry is exactly, what can you do with it, and what has it done for you. Once you know what chemistry is all about you will spend some time refreshing your memory about The Scientific Method and how it applies to chemistry. Finally you move on to learn about one very important scientific method - MEASUREMENT. You will also be working on doing math with those measurements.

Get started on your journey to everything chemistry with the resource below.

After you have done the reading, participate in the following discussion.

Now that you know a little about what chemistry is, and what it does. Let's get you started on your first assignment. In this assignment you will be making a presentation about three discoveries. Click the link to find out more.

Now that you know what chemistry in and what it can be used for. Take some time to explore some possible careers in chemistry. First visit the site from UWF to learn about chemistry careers, and then go on to the assignment.

This next activity is your first lesson. Lessons are the online equivalent to taking notes in class. In fact, as you go through this and other lessons, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a notebook handy to jot down important concepts as you go. Your first lesson will probably be somewhat of a review for you. This first lesson is on the scientific method.

After going through that lesson, if you still feel you need to know more about the scientific method, try browsing either of the two links below. The first is an interactive activity, where you get to look at the scientific method as a way to solve a mystery. The second is a site that goes through all the parts of the scientific method much like a traditional textbook would.

It just wouldn't be chemistry without doing labs. Since you are not being supervised by a science instructor in person, you will not have many opportunities to do "wet labs". Instead you will get most of your lab work in by performing various different types of simulations. This first lab is one of those simulations. You will be using the scientific method to figure out what is causing different observed changes in a reaction.

You are now ready to enter into part 2 of this unit. All throughout chemistry, and all sciences, we need to measure! And we also need to perform calculations with those measurements. The next series of activities will hopefully help to hone your measurement and math skills.

This next lab is not a simulation, but it is not really a wet lab either. In it you just have to measure 4 things. But careful, you can't do it directly! You are going to have to use your brain, and a little math.

Now that you have completed the lab, discuss your results with your peers in this forum.

This next lesson will help you delve a little bit deeper into the math skills that will be required for the successful completion of this course. Again, it is a good idea to have a notebook handy while going through a lesson.

Take what you learned in the previous lesson, and apply it to the following homework assignment.

In this next lab simulation, you will be using what you have learned about measurement and math with units to figure out the length of a fatty acid molecule called oleic acid. You will learn more about molecules later, but you probably have some ideas from earlier in your education. CO2 is one example of a "small" molecule you are probably familiar with, whereas DNA is a "large" molecule you probably already know something about. Oleic acid is somewhere in between (closer to CO2).

And finally for this first unit, probably longer than most... the unit test. Before starting the test you should make sure you review what you have learned, hopefully you have some notes jotted down in your handy-dandy notebook. Good luck!

In the first unit, you learned that chemistry is a study of matter and its changes. But what is matter anyway. In this unit you will be learning what matter is, what forms it can take, how to classify it, and how to classify its changes. Let's get started with a lesson, make sure to have your notebook ready.

Here are a few more resources for you to get a look at some chemical and physical changes. The first is an animation of salt dissolving. This will help you get a picture in your mind of what is happening during the process at the particle level. The second is a video showing mass conservation during the burning of a candle.

The next activity is a WIKI. A wiki is a document that has many different contributors. You may or may not know this, but wikipedia can actually be contributed to by anyone! Its accuracy relies on the general public to only post and monitor the postings of others in areas that they are actually experts in. This activity is a much smaller scale endeavor. Click on the link to read more.

The next activity is a lab in which you will watch videos of some demonstrations. After each demonstration you will decide if it was an example of a chemical or physical change and then provide the reasoning for your choice.

Now it is time to take a quiz on Unit 2. This has been a relatively short unit, but hopefully it has made you think about the what is happening at the atomic scale that gives the properties you see in the items all around you.

As you go through this unit, it will probably be helpful to have a periodic table handy. Here is an example of a good web-based table. Although you may want to have a printed copy for easier reference.

A good place to start when learning about the atom is with its history. What is the current model of the atom and how did we arrive at it? After you have watched the following video, hopefully you will have a pretty good idea. Make sure you are taking notes off the video, because it is filled with a lot of important information.

Now that you know something about the history of atomic theory, the next assignment gives you a chance to delve a little deeper into just one discovery.

The following lesson is here to help solidify what you should have picked up by watching the lecture video about the role of each subatomic particle. In addition to the lesson you may want to do some reading in the Chemistry Flexbook.

In the following lab you will be watching a video in order to find out what part of a compound causes the observed emission of colors.

Time to do a lab - of sorts. In this lab activity you will be constructing atoms. Good luck!

Now that you have built a few stable and unstable atoms, let's take a look at what controls an atoms stability, and what can happen to an unstable atom. The first link is probably the easiest to get through, you will need to hit next to go through 7 different pages to get all the information needed. The second link is to a HowStuffWorks site on nuclear radiation. HowStuffWorks is a great resource with easy to understand explanations. The third link is to the flexbook and has all the important information but it does go a little deeper than needed.

Now that you have done some reading, go through the following lesson to help solidify the important skills needed for nuclear reactions.

In this next activity you will be simulating radioactive decay in order to discover the how we can use math to model the behavior of physical systems. Scientist use mathematical models to better understand the real world systems, and also as a way to make predictions.

Once you have completed the lab above, participate in the discussion below with your peers.

Now that you have made it through all of the activities it is time for you to practice what you have learned and then take the unit test.

In the last unit you had to look up some information on the periodic table. You may have wondered why the periodic table has the shape that it does. To a non-chemist it would seem that a simple alphabetical list of the elements would be much easier to use. However, the periodic table in its current form is one of single most powerful tools in all of chemistry. It is not just a way to look up information, but it is a way to make predictions, and to see connections in properties of elements. The table shows us which elements we should expect to be similar, and the structure of it reminds us why. Below is a link to some reading for you to do about the history of the periodic table.

Once you have completed the reading above, participate in the discussion below.

In this next activity, you will need to use your brain in order to organize some of the elements in the periodic table just like Mendeleev did.

Hopefully you have seen that the periodic table has its shape for a reason, and that when the elements are arranged in this fashion, many patterns emerge. What are the important patterns? Why are they there? These questions and more will be revealed in this next lesson.

Rather than have a test for this unit, you will be conducting a project.  For this project you will be examining three trends in the periodic table.  Click on the link below for a more in depth description.

So now you know what matter is made up of, and you know what controls the properties of individual atoms in elements. Obviously the world is not made up of just those substances. Atoms of different elements can combine in many ways to give us the enormous diversity of matter that is all around us. But what holds the atoms together? Complete the following assignment and you will have a pretty good idea.

Time to apply what you have learned about the different types of bonding. In this lab you will try to figure out what type of bonding each of five substances makes use of.

Now that you have classified substances in lab, look all around you. Can you find an example of a substances that would use each type of bonding in your daily life? See what you can come up with and add it to the wiki below.

Knowing how atoms are held together to make substances is all well in good, but where chemistry gets really interesting, and useful, is in chemical reactions.  In a chemical reaction, bonds are broken and reformed.  Atoms are rearranged to make new substances.  This unit is all about learning how to predict what will be made by such rearrangements.  To get started do the following reading and then go through the lesson that follows.

Practice makes perfect.  The assignments below will give you some practice balancing chemical reactions before moving on to the lab.  The first assignment focuses on having you balancing the reactions by making drawings.  This is an important exercise to help you remember that the reactions actually symbolize atoms being rearranged and that is why they must be balanced.  The second has you try to just do it using the numbers.  Learning to do this is important because you need to be able to balance reactions quickly.

Now that you have completed all of the other activities for this section, it is time for you to take the test.  Good luck!

Just how many is a mole? You've been told that it is 6.02*10²³ things. This is a good number to group atoms by, since they are so small. But what if you are grouping something larger? It has been said that a mole of hockey pucks would be the mass of the moon. See if you can figure out your own analogy for the mole.

Time to practice doing mole conversions. Remember you can use the mole island and then molar mass calculator to help you check your work. But you will need to show how you came up with the answers in the assignment.

Converting units is all well in good. But what can it do for you in the real world? As you will see in the next unit, being able to go from moles to other units is absolutely crucial! But before we get to that, let's look at one type of experiment that only requires understanding molar mass and mole conversions. And that is determining the formula for a compound by experiment.

The following labs will have you determine the empirical formula of compound by experiment.

Time to show what you have learned. Make sure you are confident on the course material before beginning.

Sometimes when taking a class, and learning something new, it is easy to lose site of why we learn it at all. In order to help you understand why what you have learned is important in life, you are going to right a short research paper. The topic - Solubility!

Before you do anything else in this unit, take a look at the discussion item below. Get your posting here before moving on. Your instructor can tell if you don't look at this first!

Welcome to Stoichiometry!!! It is time to combine what you have learned about the balancing reaction and the mole. Go through the lesson below to get started down the road to mastering stoichiometry.

Below is another video example for you to follow along with. The more examples you get a look at the better off you will be!

Practice of course makes perfect. Below is an assignment for you to follow do to get a lot of practice with beginning stoichiometry problems, working in moles only. You need to master this before moving on to more difficult problems.

It is now time to delve deeper, into some more difficult, but realistic problems. The following lesson will teach you everything you need to know about stoichiometry! This is a really long lesson! Don't feel like you need to get it done in just one sitting. If you quit, you will be able to enter it back where you left off. Remember - take notes! Also, the lesson is repeated as a web-site (second link) so you can look over all the content whenever you want. You must go through the lesson to get credit.

Now that you have gone through the lesson, you might want to practice using the road map. The activity below doesn't have you solve any problems, but what it does do is gives you a problem and then you say where to start and where to end on the road map.

Once you have finished the lesson on stoichiometry, you may use the stoichiometry calculator all you like to check your work. Remember, the calculator will not show you how to do the calculation, just the answer. You will need to know how to set up the work for assignments and test.

There is also a video to show you how to use the calculator.

It wouldn't be chemistry if it weren't for the labs! This first link below is a lab simulation activity where you will explore the concept of limiting reactants by manipulating individual molecules. The second link has you follow along with a video of an actual lab, to look at limiting reactants using a real life scenario.

The more examples you look at the better you will be. Below are links to lots of different examples for you to go through. Go through as many or as few as you need until you feel like you understand the process.

All the examples above were up to you to look at or not, depending if you felt like you needed more examples. The homework below is required!

Pretest

Complete the pretest before you take the exam. The answers are attached to the pretest, so be sure to check your answers! You will not be handing in the pretest. It covers MOST of the required material, so you may want to review all topics before proceeding to the exam.

Now that you have got your practicing in, it is time for you to the test. Good luck!

You may be wondering, "why gasses?". Why should we devote a whole unit to gasses and not to liquids and solids. A big part of that is that the properties of an amount of gas can change so drastically in different situations. If I have a 1 cm3 piece of steel, and I heat it, it will expand, but not by an amount you can measure with a ruler. In contrast a 1 cm3 sample of gas can easily double in size when heated. Because gases can change so drastically, it is important for scientists and engineers to be able to account for those changes. Luckily gases are fairly well behaved. In this next activity you will be looking into one relationship of gas properties using a lab that you design. If you are stuck coming up with lab ideas, bounce some thoughts around in the discussion a little further down the page.

An important part of science is keeping up to date with what your peers are doing and evaluating the quality of other's work. Science is not done in a vacuum. Scientists collaborate with each other a lot. In this next assignment you will be critiquing the work of one of your peers.

Below that is a place to discuss the lab and the critiquing process.

Now that you have seen how gases behave, can you explain the behavior. You must do this before moving on to the next activity!

You guessed it, finally time to learn what the accepted theory is. Complete the lesson below, and you'll come out knowing everything you want to know about gases.

Below is the homework to give you practice applying what you learned in the lesson about the gas laws.

Below are three gas labs for you to perform. In the first a butane lighter is used as the source of the gas to examine how close you can get to the value of 22.4 L/mol. The second lab shows you how the value for absolute zero temperature is determined. The last lab is a "wet" lab, allowing you to actually use some chemicals along with your chemistry!

Use the link below to get some more questions to try for review before continuing on to the test.

Time to take the gas law test. Make sure you understand everything before proceeding.

In order to learn about thermochemistry you need to be able to use some terms. To be able to use the terms, you have to understand them. Participate in forum below to see what you can come up with for how some terms are related.

The following lesson will go through the information you need to know for thermochemistry.

Below is an assignment that will have you work through all the different type of thermochemistry problems, while giving you hints along the way. Hopefully this will solidify what was started in the lesson and get you ready for the lab and test. The second link has a worksheet you can work on for your own benefit. It has additional notes with problems to work on.

The following links are lab simulations for this unit. The first one has you calculate the amount of cream you need to add to get your coffee to the perfect temperature. In the second lab you will need to calculate the specific heat of four different metals. In the last lab you will be calculating the enthalpy change of a reaction.

Now that you have had a lot of practice with thermochemistry on the homework and in the labs, you are ready to take the test. Make sure you understand what you are doing before continuing on.

We will start off this unit with a wet lab that you design! The purpose of the lab is to determine what factors affect the rate of the reaction. Start out discussing with your peers what you think might affect the rate of reaction, after that start designing and then conduct your lab.

Now that you have performed your own experiment, work through this lesson to look at the factors that affect the rate of reactions, along with explanations for why. The lesson will go on to teach you about reaction mechanisms and rate laws.