AACT Aqueous Solutions Unit Plan Updated

As chemistry teachers around the country are planning activities for both distant and face-to-face learning, 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. We recently updated the Phase Changes and Heat Capacity unit and we are now moving on to resources that can be used to support an Aqueous Solutions unit.

We have added several new activities related to this topic in the high school library, which are highlighted below. We have also updated our unit plan to help you teach an introductory unit on aqueous solutions. In the sidebar of this page, we have included links to resources that are appropriate for virtual learning.

Introductory Activity

The activity, Elements, Compounds, & Mixtures - Oh My! will help your students define terms related to various kinds of pure substances and mixtures. They then analyze and draw particle diagrams related to the vocabulary around this topic.

Culminating Activity

Students test water samples from a local zoo for the presence of ions to determine why many bird eggs are not hatching in the lab, An Environmental Impact Study. Once the type of ion in the water is determined, students write balanced equations to illustrate their findings and conduct a serial dilution to determine the concentration of the ion in the water sample. The molarity is then compared to known values to determine if the materials in the water are at an unhealthy level.

We hope that these resources can help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit about aqueous solutions. 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.