Metal Activity Series…all about the next guy.

I think I’ve said before on here that analogies are to me the BEST way of getting material across.  It is just so easy to boil difficult complex to to easy to understand by bringing them into everyday life.  It’s particularly true I think for high school kids, who quite frankly have a lot on their mind besides Chemistry.

Case in point the other day, I had a girl that was completely overwhelmed by the Metal Activity Series…just the name itself brought blank stares.  She had a homework assignment of reactants in potential single replacement reactions and was to use the series to determine products (if any).  Again blank stares.

Simple analogy.  Metals in the series are a popularity list of boys in school.  On the reactants side, you are already paired up with your guy.  But here comes another guy that wants to take you out..

Now if the guy you are with is more popular than the new guy, no way you change and you stick with the guy you are with.  But

if the new guy is MORE popular on our handy series, then why not upgrade to the new beau.

Voila…within minutes we were flying through the homework.  Now on some level is it terrible that I’ve brought The Hills (for the record never seen the show; don’t even know if it still is a show!) into chemistry class and perpetuated the terrible social stratification of high school kids…Yes…and having been lower on my own high school’s “activity series”, shame on me.  But it worked great…take away the intimidating words (metal activity series, replacement reaction, etc.) and there is little difference in the concepts.