The purpose of this article is to increase student involvement with graph construction
specifically in the context of introductory laboratory activities that involve
mass relationships between reacting substances and products. In this regard,
five mass–mass plots derived from a synthesis of a binary compound from
its elements are presented as well as a set of questions to focus learners
on the significance of each plot. The benefit of providing learners with these
types of graphing activities include the use of higher-order cognitive processes
as well as the elucidation of fundamental chemical knowledge such as the law
of the conservation of mass, the law of constant composition, limiting and
excess reactants, and empirical formula. To incorporate graphing exercises
involving mass relationships into lab activities, three simple actions are
necessary: (i) the quantities of reactants that have undergone transformation
and the quantities of products that have been made as a result of the chemical
reaction must be directly measured or deduced, (ii) the mass of reactants in
the experiment must be varied, and (iii) to save time, students should work
in groups and pool data.
Our Secondary School editors work hard to distill all the JCE materials to produce a fraction of particular interest to high school teachers. We call it CLIC.
In recent years we have worked hard to better match our advertisers with our readers. When shopping for chemistry education materials, visit our advertisers' WWW sites first.
Take JCE along on your outreach missions. Copies of the Journal, guest access to JCE Online, our publications catalog, and more are available for your participants.