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

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.