teaching – Page 29

“The task of calcs stoichiometric
Is central to chem’s dialectic.
For reactions, find yield
When this knowledge you wield,
As you monitor products eclectic.”

Another teaching-centered limerick here on Day 4 of this April 2019 project… this one seeks to answer the questions: Why do the concepts of balancing reactions loom so large in so many former chem students’ minds? Why do we spend so much time balancing reactions in the first place? (What are the disciplinary applications of that skill?)

“The task of calcs stoichiometric/
Is central to Chem’s dialectic.”
Once a reaction is balanced, we can do a variety of interesting calculations with it; this is a central theme of introductory chemistry. Learning how to manipulate and use a balanced chemical reaction is the substance of stoichiometry, a word that comes from the Greek for “element” plus “measure.” A balanced reaction gives rise to the proportions of the reactants and products involved.

The 1991 version of Father of the Bride, with Steve Martin’s grocery store tantrum, indirectly provides an introduction to these concepts! In this scene, Martin’s character George has a breakdown when he cannot buy hot dogs and hot dog buns in the same quantities; he dismantles packages of the latter to achieve equivalent amounts of the two.

Here, George’s “balanced reaction” is:
1 Hot Dog + 1 Bun → 1 Hot-Dog-In-Bun.

He erupts when he cannot purchase his “reagents” (ingredients) in the necessary “stoichiometric ratio” (here, one-to-one).

“For reactions, find yield/ When this knowledge you wield/
As you monitor products eclectic.”
One oft-taught application of stoichiometry is predicting the yield of a chemical reaction: how much of a desired product can we obtain, given the starting amounts? (To return to the cinematic scene cited above, since George has eight hot dogs and twelve buns, his maximum “yield” would be eight hot-dogs-in-buns… to his obvious frustration.) If a balanced reaction has multiple reactants and/or products, we can apply stoichiometric principles to any of them.

This opens the door to many valuable calculations: the combination of a balanced reaction and an understanding of the periodic table is a particularly powerful tool to “wield.”

“To balance a given reaction,
Complete an established transaction.
‘Cross the arrow you must
Coefficients adjust:
Conserve mass and ensure satisfaction.”

Many of the April 2019 limericks were written with a potential teaching objective in mind, and the April 3 limerick is one of them. As I’ve taught the same topics more often, I’ve started to hear more of a rhythm and rhyme when I do so.

“To balance a given reaction,/
Complete an established transaction.”
I have had occasion to collaborate with generous teaching colleagues outside of chemistry in the past decade, and thus to benefit from their expertise while hearing their external perspectives on my discipline. One of the most interesting themes we’ve discussed is that, for non-specialists, learning to “balance reactions” is often one of the most vivid memories of their high school chemistry courses. Balancing a reaction means confirming that the reaction has equal numbers of elements as reactants (on the left side of the reaction arrow) and products (on the right side).

In building on this conversation, it has been illustrative to contrast the skills of chemistry with the discipline of chemistry itself. In my experience, it’s rare that someone enjoys learning the concrete skill of balancing reactions, but mastering that skill opens the door to many interesting disciplinary applications. The introductory experience is similar to learning piano scales: the skill can open many wonderful doors, but the skill itself (at least for this once-aspiring pianist!) isn’t necessarily the fun part.

“‘Cross the arrow you must/ Coefficients adjust:/
Conserve mass and ensure satisfaction.”
Chief among the rules in balancing reaction equations: the only numbers that can change to achieve said balance are the numbers in front of each chemical formula– the coefficients– rather than the subscripts on the chemical formulas themselves. (Changing the subscripts changes the identity of the chemical species.)

Further, it’s easy to overlook as one is mastering the skill, but a balanced reaction is an elegant contextualization of the law of conservation of mass; a chemical reaction does not create or destroy matter: it simply rearranges it.