What do chemical words mean? Exploring key terms | 14-16 years

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Explore and clarify key concepts including substance, pure, element, compound, atom and molecule using this lesson plan with activities for 14–16 year olds.

Working through a series of statements, students clarify their ideas about some key terms relating to chemistry and chemical processes.

This resource explores the following misconceptions:

A substance cannot be a gas or a mixture.
A pure substance is something that occurs in nature.
An element is made up of one type of atom only and cannot be split further.
A compound has the combined properties of the elements from which it is made.
Atoms show the macro properties of an element.
Molecules are always formed when atoms combine.
A molecule always contains different kinds of atoms.

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