Energy Levels

September 26, 2018

I’ve just finished teaching this topic to my students. I always find it an interesting topic to teach as the ideas used are so different to those you are probably taught prior to IB. Just when you were happy with the idea that atoms have electrons in shells you...

Everyday Life, Benzyl Alcohol and the EE

September 14, 2018

In my experience, the biggest problem students have with EE’s is picking the right thing to investigate. Students will tell me they want to carry out an EE in chemistry and have no idea what they will investigate. Those that do have ideas quite often have ideas...

Dyes

August 29, 2018

I’ve just finished my summer reading book, Ken Follett’s novel World Without End. If you haven’t read it, I would thoroughly recommend it, although it is the second book of a trilogy (book 1 is called The Pillars of the Earth). The book I sent in the...

Vitamin Chemistry

August 10, 2018

Vitamins are taught in the biochemistry option. However, the aim of this blog post is not to cover the exact requirements of the IB course. Instead, my intention is to give the reader an overview of the topic. So, what do we mean by vitamins? Well, vitamins are...

Isomers of Water

July 4, 2018

A week or so ago I stumbled across an article on the BBC website talking about isomers of water. At first, I thought a mistake had been made and that the article should have used the word ‘isotopes’. I was thinking it was something to do with ‘heavy...

Gar Jar Demos

May 9, 2018

I’ve recently been doing some demos showing how the pH of the period 3 oxides changes. The demos involved the combustion of various period 3 elements with oxygen, dissolving the oxide in water and adding universal indicator to show the pH. It’s very visual and always...