Follow
@kel @IanCBell @typhlosion ...possibly? In any case I see no reason not to aim, from the start, at an orbital-based picture of the atom and of molecules. People can instinctively grasp the idea of "clouds" of charge, I think. The trick is getting them to understand that the "cloud" looks like discrete particles whenever you glance at it.
@typhlosion @IanCBell @kel The important thing is to get into students' heads from the very start that all of chemistry is the movement of electrons. I feel that this very simple fact gets obscured in contemporary teaching, especially because chemistry is taught apart from physics...it's almost as though chemistry teaching antedates the discovery of the electron in some ways.