My fourth time through this topic in lecture and lab is yet an other new beginning. I rewrote my handout AGAIN for the third time. My supplementary handout started out as a four-page document, evolved into an eight-page document and has now become a 12-page document. Whewwwww! Challenging. Every time I teach this topic I realize more and more exactly what the students don't understand. The strange thing is that out of the three textbooks I own on chemistry, only one actually explains it thoroughly from the lewis dot models to the VSEPR shapes to the dipole moments/polarity and overall symmetry of each molecule. Is this a new topic? I doubt it. I'm trying to understand why none of the book authors can sufficiently explain it.
Interesting observation. Both of my General Chemistry books seem to follow this logical approach, though lewis e-dot formulas are covered in an earlier chapter. Also the symmetry aspect is fairly basic, though it seems about right for intro level Gen-chem.
ReplyDeleteI've got the 5th addition of Ebbing's "general chemistry" and "Chemistry the science of change" from Brown, LeMay and Bursten. Though I've never really looked at these texts from a "teaching" perspective, so I may be off the mark with what you consider adequate...
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