Atomic Structure

This curriculum unit is intended for an average eleventh grade chemistry class. It was designed to address unit two of the School District of Philadelphia’s standardized curriculum for chemistry. It is also in alignment with the Pennsylvania State Standards for Science and Technology. The unit covers the historical development of the atom from the early Greek philosophers up to and including the discovery of elementary particles and their role in the structure of the atom. As designed, the unit should take approximately ten days to complete. Cooperative learning techniques will be used extensively throughout the unit as a means of improving the scholastic achievement of all of my students. The three laboratory activities that are included were specifically chosen to illustrate the contributions of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, John Joseph Thomson, and Robert Millikan.