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This activity is designed to give students practice with predicting the preferred direction of double displacement reactions using the hard-soft acid-base (HSAB) principle. It includes a question where students must determine the relative softness of two soft bases. This activity was used after the lecture where students were introduced to these concepts.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| In-Class Activity: Predicting reactivity with the HSAB principle | 22.71 KB |
Students should be able to:
- Separate a compound into a Lewis acid and a Lewis base
- Assign the acid and base as hard, soft, or borderline
- Use these assignments to predict the direction that a reaction will proceed
- Identify which atom will serve as the electron pair donor in a polyatomic Lewis base
- Determine the relative softness of two soft species
None.
I have the students work on the activity in groups and then we discuss it together at the end of class. When I used the activity I was teaching via Zoom, so I had students collaborate with their group in a Google Doc (one page per group) and I followed along while they were in their breakout rooms. I taught my class in a flipped format, so the activity is designed to take a full 50 minute class period, including introduction, group work, and full class discussion.