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About this Course
Chemistry relates a lot, especially in Grade 8 and 9 chemistry, because it's talking about atoms. And atoms, as we hopefully remember, it's the smallest unit of matter, so they make up everything in the world. Atoms are elements that make up compounds, mixtures. So everything we're seeing and how things interact with each other, like reactions, those are all things based from chemistry. And chemistry is cool because we can notice a lots of real-world connections, for example, how a concrete bridge actually gets a little bit bigger in the summer, and it actually gets a little bit smaller in the winter when it's cold, because particles act differently at different temperatures.
One skills that are important in chemistry are lab skills. Working with different chemicals and using different lab procedures such as using like compounds and elements and using all the equipment that's in the lab, whether that's scales or chromatography or things like this. Just picking up different skills in the lab. The concepts that are important to grasp is understanding that everything is made out of chemicals and then when you look around you in your world understanding how different chemicals come together to form all the things that we have in the world. Another big skill is being able to use models to represent things, because a big topic is atoms, and then in Grade 9, compounds. So Bohr models or other types of models to show the parts and how they can combine or separate is one big skill.
One project that students did last year in the chemistry unit was researching about one element in particular. Students had to learn and make a project, a cube, on the history of that element, all the properties of that element. It's density, colour, all those kinds of informations, how to use that element, and also Bohr models of that element. In grade 8 and grade 9, there are lots of beginner labs that students will be doing. For example, in grade 8 chemistry unit there is a diffusion labs, density labs, calculating density and understanding matter. Projects also include understanding the history of different elements and compounds, understanding atomic theory and how we understand the atom to look like now compared to what we did a long time ago.
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