Fatima Hanan N.

Alfad BSN-1B

August 5, 2013 Chemlec101

Reflective Essay On Inorganic Chemistry

In this reflection paper, I will address the main points that I found most challenging, the areas which informed my understanding of an aspect of Inorganic Chemistry with what I already knew and list the areas I would have liked to have explored more in depth.
Based on the article Ive read, Inorganic chemistry is a branch of chemistry that deals with the properties and behavior of inorganic compounds. Inorganic compounds are generally those that are not biological and characterized by not containing any hydrogen and carbon bonds. Many inorganic compounds are ionic compounds, consisting of cations and anions joined by ionic bonding. This field covers matter and its properties and changes, elements, chemical bonding and molecular geometry.

The most challenging and confusing part of the course for me by far is the chemical bonding. A chemical bond is an attraction between atoms that allows the formation of chemical substances that contain two or more atoms. I do have poor background in this part thats why I have hard times in drawing the electron dot structure of atoms, demonstrating the transfer of electrons in ionic bond through LEDS and drawing electron dot diagrams and structural formulae for simple molecules and ions and deduce molecular formulae. Some of the questions to be answered or problems to be solved that I have encountered were a little tricky and navigating through the browser wasnt always simple and easy. A topic area of the field that I was already familiar with, but was informed with more in details is the changes of matter: physical change and chemical change. Physical
change rearranges molecules but doesn't affect their internal structures. While chemical change is any change that result in the formation of new chemical substances. At the molecular level, chemical change involves making or breaking of bonds between atoms. Before, Ive

never really mastered how to determine whether the change that occurs in that certain matter is physical or chemical. I find the classification of real processes tricky. But I learned
that complex changes can be broken down into many simpler steps. Some of the steps are

chemical and others are physical, so the overall process can't cleanly be placed in either category. For instance, boiling coffee involves chemical change (the delicate molecules that give coffee its flavor react with air and become new, bitter-tasting substances) and physical change (the water in the coffee is going from liquid to gaseous form). Having to research and

reading articles on physical and chemical changes of matter broaden my knowledge and understanding on this area which will be beneficial moving forward. On the other hand, the area in this field in which I would have liked to have
explored more on would have to be molecular geometry. Molecular geometry is the threedimensional arrangement of the atoms that constitute a molecule. It determines several properties of a substance including its reactivity, polarity, phase of matter, color, magnetism, and biological activity. I did get the basic general meaning of it, but could have used just

a bit more insight on them to familiarize myself a little more. I hope Id learn more about this.