I recommend four sites: Energy State and Atomic Orbitals, Schrödinger's Atom, a Rotating Tetrahedron (to illustrate the Pauli Exclusion Principle and Hund's Rule) and What Atomic Orbitals Look Like.Īgain, students have a hard time visualizing energy shells, sub-shells and electron configurations. And From Quarks to Quasars discusses the nature and shape of the electron.Įnergy states and orbitals really confuse students and it all has to do with our insistence on 'orbitting' or 'ringing' electrons around atom nuclei (a much out-dated model of the atom). This image, from The Particle Adventure, is our current model of the atom. And the Periodic Table Timeline traces the history of the building of the periodic table.īrian Cox does a great job explaining the history of our understanding of the atom and the make-up of the Universe in the first 8.5 (up to 8:27) minutes of this video. To show students that this is not the only periodic table that ever existed, The Internet Database of Periodic Tables shows all the periodic tables ever made from Ancient times to today (literally). And then change your students' perspectives in the Hogwarts Houses of the Periodic Elements: A Critical Analysis. And of course, who could forget Bill Nye, who talks about the atoms and the Periodic Table in the first 1:42 minutes of one of his episodes. Your kids into comics? Well, there is a Period Table of Comic Books too. The Open University also has videos on chemistry, elemental chemistry and the science behind explosive alkali-water interactions. And Chemistry in its Element - Periodic Table of Element Podcasts and QR-Coded Audio Periodic Table of the Elements: A Mobile-Learning Tool offer podcasts from scientists describing each element. Similar sites, with less information, are Chemicool's, Spectrum's and ChemEd DL's periodic tables.Įric Rosado recounts Solving the Puzzle of the Periodic Table and The Periodic Table: Groups and Trends explains the properties and trends of the periodic table.įor further information on elements, a Periodic Table of Videos, a QR Periodic Table of Videos and TED-Ed Periodic Videos offer videos illustrating the elements and their behaviours through empirical experiments. It is the best periodic table rendering out there and a great resource where almost anything periodic and elemental can be learned. I can not recommend Michael Dayah's dynamic Ptable enough ( demo). This page is meant as a resource to clarify and enrich your introduction of the periodic table to your students. This page contains links and resources that unpack and explain the organization of elements in the Periodic Table and the properites of elements based on their electron configurations. We mapĭifferent electron configurations and ground energy states on a periodic table. Each atom in turn has unique properties related to its ground energy state and electron configuration. Each element contains one unique type of atom.

As element electron configuration