New AACT Resources to Teach Equilibrium (2024)

As chemistry teachers around the country plan activities for their students, AACT will be highlighting resources from our high school resource library that can be used to reinforce topics in different units throughout the school year. Our last post highlighted resources to support a Kinetics unit. We will now focus on activities for an Equilibrium unit.

We now have an equilibrium animation in our multimedia library! The animation explores equilibrium through the examples of water and a piece of chalk (CaCO₃). Once equilibrium is established, students see there is no net change in the ions in solution, as when one set of particles dissolves, another set of particles will recombine. The accompanying activity walks students through the animation and extends their understanding by asking them to apply their knowledge to hemoglobin in the blood and ocean acidification.

Engage your students in collecting data to show what happens when a system reaches equilibrium using the Shaking Dice to Model Equilibrium Principles activity. Students will roll different sided dice, creating a data table and a graph that shows the reactants and products reaching equilibrium. They will walk away with an understanding of the work dynamic as they notice that they are still rolling dice even when the amounts stop changing. 

We hope that the activities in this unit plan will help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit about equilibrium. Most of these lessons were made possible by great teachers who shared their own resources. We need your help to keep the collection growing. Do you have a great demonstration, activity, or lesson related to this topic that you would like to share with the community? Please send it along for consideration.