Study suggestions chapter 10 Honors
What's the easiest kind of question I have to answer? You should be able to identify a reaction as one of the five major types (synthesis, decompostion, combustion, single replacement, or double replacement), and you should be able to supply the correct coefficients to balance any equation, no matter what type it is, if you are given the skeleton equation for the reaction.
What kind of question might ask me to do more work? If you are given the names of all of the reactants and products, you may need to write the skeleton equation on your own, and then balance the equation you have written. To be successful here, you absolutely have to know how to write chemical formulas for compounds, and you have to be aware of the seven special diatomic elements.
What will I have to do on the "honors level" of difficulty? Here you'll need to know the reaction patterns for specific reactions within a general type. For example, you'll need to know that when a metal chlorate undergoes decomposition, exactly what will it decompose into? Once you've established the identity of the products, then you can complete the skeleton equation and balance the equation.
How do I know if a specific replacement reaction (either single or double) will actually take place? Single replacement reactions will occur if the "single" element is more reactive than the element it might replace. In general metals towards the left side of the periodic table are more reactive than those on the right side, and metals towards the lower part of the table are more reactive than those towards the top of the table. A more specific ranking can be determined from looking at a chart of the "Activity Series", such as the one on p. 288 of the textbook.
Double replacement reactions will occur if the switching of partners leads to the formation of a solid precipitate from two solutions, or if water can be formed from an acid-base reaction, or if one of the products is a gas or can easily become a gas. Although you aren't very familiar with precipitates, you can count on the fact that no compound that contains an element from the first column of the periodic table is ever a precipitate. Likewise, if a compound contains "ammonium" or "nitrate" ions, that compound will not be a precipitate. Thus, if sodium chloride solution and potassium nitrate solution are combined, there is NO REACTION, because none of the products is a precipitate, or water, or a gas. This information is discussed in great detail in section 10.3, BUT the chapter test will not go into great detail beyond the information in this paragraph. We may, at a later date, come back and discuss "net ionic equations", but now is not the time.
Will there be Multiple Choice questions on the test, or will it all be writing equations? The answer to that question depends on when the test is actually given. The more days it is postponed due to weather, the more likely there will be a variety of questions, not just equations, to deal with.