Chemical Reactions!: With 25 Science Projects for Kids

By Susan Berk Koch and Micah Rauch

Chemical Reactions brings chemistry to life with hands-on, science-minded activities and plenty of text-to-world connections that invite kids ages 7 to 10 to discover the wonderful world of chemical reactions!

You might think chemistry only happens in a laboratory with people wearing white coats—but actually, chemistry is all around us!

We observe chemical reactions every day. Did you eat toast this morning? That toast was a result of a chemical reaction. Did your family have a fire in your fireplace last night? Burning wood is a chemical reaction! There’s even chemistry happening inside your own body as you break down the food you eat into usable nutrients. In Chemical Reactions! With 25 Science Projects for Kids, readers ages 7 to 10 learn about the atoms and molecules that make up everything in our world and what happens when different atoms and molecules come in contact with each other.

About the Explore Your World series and Nomad Press

Nomad Press books in the Explore Your World series integrate content with participation, encouraging readers to engage in student-directed learning. Combining content with inquiry-based projects stimulates learning and makes it active and alive. Nomad’s unique approach simultaneously grounds kids in factual knowledge while allowing them the space to be curious, creative, and critical thinkers.

All books are leveled for Guided Reading level and Lexile and align with Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards.

All titles are available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook formats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nomad Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781619309425

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CONTENTS

Timeline

Periodic Table of Elements

Introduction

Chemistry Matters!

Chapter 1

Mixtures: Be a Detective

Chapter 2

Abracadabra: Chemical Reactions

Chapter 3

Water, Acids, and Bases

Chapter 4

It’s a Gas!

Chapter 5

Manmade Compounds

Glossary*Metric Conversions

Resources*Essential Questions*Index

Interested in primary sources? Look for this icon. Use a smartphone or tablet app to scan the QR code and explore more! Photos are also primary sources because a photograph takes a picture at the moment something happens.

TIMELINE

300 BCE: Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle declares the existence of only four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. He says, mistakenly, that all matter is made up of these four elements.

430 BCE: Democritus, an ancient Greek philosopher, proclaims the atom to be the simplest unit of matter.

1649: German pharmacist Hennig Brand discovers the element phosphorous. Elements such as gold, silver, tin, copper, lead, and mercury had been known for a long time, but this was the first scientific discovery of an element.

1789: Chemist Antoine Lavoisier shows that the mass of products in a reaction is equal to the mass of the reactants. In other words, no mass is lost in a chemical reaction. This became known as the law of conservation of mass. It is one of the most important and basic laws of modern chemistry and physics.

1803: Chemist John Dalton publishes his atomic theory, which states that all matter is composed of atoms, which are small and indivisible. The Greeks had many of these ideas and Dalton built on them.

1869: Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev creates the first periodic table by grouping together elements that act alike. The gaps in his table are where undiscovered elements will fit in later.

1890s–1900s: Marie and Pierre Curie discover radioactive materials and two new elements. They win a Nobel Prize in 1903 and Marie wins a second one in 1911. She is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes!

1932: The first nuclear fusion reaction is performed in a laboratory. This process involves smashing together two or more smaller elements to form a heavier element. Every star in the universe, including the sun, uses nuclear fusion to produce energy.

1938: German chemists Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner discover nuclear fission when large uranium atoms are split apart. Today, nuclear fission is used to generate 10 percent of the world’s bodyelectricity.

2017: Three scientists develop a method to see the three-dimensional structure of cells on an atomic level, paving the way for new medicines and therapies.

2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna win a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of a method of gene editing that might help treat certain diseases.

PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHEMISTRY MATTERS!

You might think chemistry happens only in a laboratory with people wearing white coats. Not true! Chemistry is all around us! We come across chemical reactions every day.

Did you eat toast this morning? That toast was a result of a chemical reaction. Did you wash your hands before you ate your toast? Soap cleans because of a chemical reaction, too! There’s even chemistry happening inside your own body as you break down the food you eat into nutrients.

Chemistry is the science of change and it always happens for a reason. People have been trying to discover those reasons for centuries.

INVESTIGATE!

Where can you see chemistry happening right now?

WORDS TO KNOW

chemistry: the science of how atoms and molecules combine to form substances and how those substances interact, combine, and change.

atom: the smallest particle of an element. Atoms are the tiny building blocks that make up everything in the universe.

molecule: a group of atoms bound together to form a new substance. An example is water (H2O), which is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

chemical reaction: the combination of two or more substances that results in a completely new chemical substance. This can also mean the chemical breakdown of one substance into its parts.

nutrients: substances in food and soil that living things need to live and grow.

substance: the material that something is made of. alchemist: a person who practiced an early form of chemistry with the goal of turning ordinary metals into gold.

theory: a set of ideas based on observation and data to explain something that has happened.

CHEMISTRY HISTORY

Scientists who specialize in chemistry are called chemists.