Award-Winning Chemistry Tutors serving Reading

The student and I reviewed one of her previous tests to begin the session. The concepts included mass and mass conversions, the electromagnetic spectrum, isotopes, and bond energy. She picked up all of the topics easily. She understood the bond energy problem after I explained it in multiple ways. I asked her to review more questions related to bond energy after our session.

The student and I reviewed once more for his final exam, specifically the topics of hybridization, and MO diagrams using hybridized MO diagrams. We reviewed drawing hybridized MO diagrams for molecules with localized and delocalized pi systems, in addition to drawing the sigma and pi orbital frameworks for each molecule. We reviewed the different hybridization schemes, and practiced determining which orbitals corresponded to which bonds and lone pairs around atoms in Lewis structures. I noticed that the student really improved during this session, and was very well prepared from his independent studying beforehand.

This session we reviewed for the student's chemistry final. We did practice problems from her previous exams that she did not feel confident about. In most situations there was a small step in the set-up or completion that was not immediately apparent to her. She is to review molecular geometry on her own. We will meet again after winter break.

We started off with rational expressions. The student had some trouble with simplifying them. The short answer is to make sure there is no addition or subtraction signs outside of parentheses before you cancel. We then looked at nomenclature. For the most part, we just needed to clear up some rules.

Today was my first session with this student. We started out by looking at the stoichiometry and how one would find the number of atoms if the mass is the only value that's given! Crazy stuff, but we figured it out. At the very beginning of the session we talked about what that mysterious Avogadro's number is and why we need it when the talk starts about the moles. The second part of our session was devoted to ideal gas equation and how to use it to calculate the volume of the balloon that traveled to different places that involved a change of pressure, temperature or volume. The student likes math is very good at it. Today we only started uncovering chemistry, but we got a lot of work done!

We went through mole calculations. I started from the concept and solved different problems to make sure the students understood how to do them. Then I asked them to solve several problems to make sure they can solve them. They understood the concept but they have to practice more. I assigned some homework as well to make sure they will practice. They are doing well.