Molar Mass Game

Materials Needed:

• Current Periodic Tables

Lesson:

• Students are to use periodic tables to identify chemical symbols that will form a work when combined. Subscripts should be used for double letters.
• After constructing the word the student then calculates the molar mass (MM) of the "compound".

Example 1:

• symbol for iron -- Fe
• symbol for argon -- Ar
• put them together to spell FeAr (fear)
• Molar Mass= 56 G/mol +40 G/mol = 96 G/mol

Example 2:

• bossy -- BOS₂Y (boron, sulfur, sulfur, and yttrium)
• Molar mass=180 G/mol

Students can compete to see who can identify:

• most "word compounds"
• longest "word compound"
• heaviest "word compound"
• lightest "word compound"

Teacher Notes:

Here are some more examples that my students have found.

• BOW₂OW (bowwow)
• SiN, SIN, SIn, (sin)
• BaNa₂S (bananas)
• HI (hi)
• RaIn, RaIN (rain)
• FOUNd (found)
• WAs (was)
• SuPErCaLiFRaGeLiStic (supercalifragelistic)
• CAmOUFLaGe (camouflage)

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Contributed by Debra Ligeski, Lapeer East High School

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