Something you can do visually in the lecture theatre is to take in some things you wish to connect and make up an item. Or in PhET, for example, there’s a little activity you can do making sandwiches and you can work out how much you need of which one and whether you’ve got something that’s there in excess or something that’s limiting. It's based on the molar ratios or the stoichiometric coefficients, which in turn are based on the number of moles reacting.
Try to show students that the fundamental form of matter is energy. Then that this can be represented as particles with mass or as waves (wave functions). Link to YouTube Video: Particles and Waves
Using clickers, put up say four ideas, and say, who thinks A and who thinks B, C, D. Now in the groups they need to defend their answer, and to talk about it. That way you get the feedback but you don’t have to say Bill, Mary, Jim, Jack, what do you think? You can get them to click their answers.
Use the Vis Chem website, which is Roy Tasker’s resource, and there are links to a Scootle site where you can download visualisations for chemical bonding and pure substances in different states. There is gaseous water and liquid water. You can see they’re close together - they’re crowded. You can talk about ice skating. You can press the ice and it becomes liquid. That’s why the ice skates slide. You can see they’re jiggling away. There’s some space between them.
