Blog Post #6

      WebMO lab report. This lab was very important because it helps to prepare for our test. Some very important details about this lab were the shape and polarity of molecules. Shape was very important and we learned that it is determined by the number of paired and unpaired electron clouds. Polarity is also important because although the atoms in the molecules are polar, they can sometimes cancel each other out making the molecule not polar. The shape of the molecule ties in to this because often times the shape can determine if the atoms in the molecule can cancel each other out.
In this past week we learned lots o' stuff. Some of the things we learned were VSEPR, polarity, hybridization, and sigma and pi bonds. We learned some this stuff last week too but this week we put it all together with our VSEPR WebMO lab. WebMO is a program created by Hope college which allows us to model molecules. It is very helpful as it provides a good visual to molecules and provides many important details about the molecule. Using WebMO, we modeled 13 molecules and found the electron domain geometries, molecular domain geometries, dihedral angles, dipole moments, and many other things You can see my full report on this lab here:
     We came to understand all of these ideas this week through our POGIL with balloons and gum drops and the lab we did using WebMO. The lab report was kind of the icing on the cake which tied the two together. I feel like I understood everything which went into the lab report pretty well but I still have some questions regarding ionic and covalent bonds and how they tie into what we've learned. I think  participted very well in this past weeks assignments, I did all of my WebMO molecules without any issues and also was able to do my lab report and study for the upcoming test. I think I still need to work on getting lewis structures down faster because I feel like at times it takes me too long to draw them out. One thing that  really gets me thinking is the molecule BrF5 (Bromide pentafluoride). I found this molecule interesting because its unpaired electron cloud does not effect the original angles that would be made in an octahedral model made with all paired electron clouds.