Using Balls of Different Sports To Model the Variation of Atomic Sizes

Gabriel Pinto ^[1]
1. [1] Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
  
  Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
  
  Madrid, España
Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 75, Nº 6 (June), 1998, págs. 725-725
Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
- In this article, an analogy is described about the order of magnitude of the variation of atomic sizes that can be used for discussion in introductory chemistry classes. The order of magnitude of this variation, involving microscopic magnitudes, is difficult for students to imagine. For the most part, the students are very familiar with the world of sports. In any case for example, the teacher can make use of the wide, informative coverage given to the olympic games or similar events, where different sports are televised in a few days. The radii of official balls for seven well-known sports are given, and students must assign an atom to each ball by using tabulated single-bond, covalent radii and by assigning the smallest ball (i.e., corresponding to ping-pong) to the smallest atom (i.e., hydrogen). The balls can also be used to show how the ionic radii change upon ionization.