Using a Hands-On Method To Help Students Learn Inorganic Chemistry Nomenclature via Assembly of Two-Dimensional Shapes

Abstract

Learning chemical nomenclature is part of many students' first contact with chemistry. Generation after generation of students has come to love chemistry after successfully overcoming the "barriers" of the first difficulties in the learning process. Other students fail and abandon the study of chemistry forever. A tool named FORMula, which is a combination of the words FORM (i.e., shape) and formula, has been developed to reduce or eliminate barriers in the process of learning inorganic chemistry nomenclature. The method uses two-dimensional polygonal or circular shapes and panels (representing ions) that can be assembled only in ways permitted by the rules of nomenclature to create compounds. This method can be used to help students in determining the name of a compound given its chemical formula and in determining a chemical formula of a compound when given its name. This method can help any new chemistry student, but particularly students affected by color-vision deficiencies, severe visual impairments, or blindness. Students can practice individually or in groups, in the classroom or at home. The method can also be used to help understand the periodic table, element properties (such as oxidation states), the stoichiometries of chemical reactions, and the application of nomenclature rules in inorganic chemistry.

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