Our Overarching Goals:

Students appreciate applicability of science in other disciplines and in everyday life.

Students develop abilities, skills and attitudes that are relevant to the study and practice of science.
Students use the language and conventions of science to explain and communicate scientific ideas
Students recognize that the applications of science may be both beneficial and detrimental to the individual, the community and the environment.

Ngee Ann Secondary School

Chemistry (with SPA)
Worksheet 1 - Metals
Answer Scheme

1. Answer the following questions by using the words from the given list. Each word can be
used once, more than once or not at all.

Aluminium Magnesium Brass Calcium carbonate

Copper Bronze Mercury Sodium carbonate

a. Name a metal carbonate which is not decomposed by heat. Sodium carbonate

b. Name a metal which can reduce aluminium oxide to aluminium. Magnesium
c. Name a metal whose oxide can be reduced by heating it with oxide. Mercury
d. Name an alloy which contains tin as one of the components. Bronze
e. Name a metal used for making train carriages. Brass

2. Identify the metal by selecting from the following list:

Sodium, Gold, Iron, Copper and Zinc

a. A metal that reacts vigorously with cold water: sodium

b. Two metals that reacts with steam but not the cold water: iron & zinc

c. A metal that will not react with dilute acid: copper / gold

d. Two metals that can displace copper from its salt solution:
sodium & zinc or iron & zinc or sodium & iron

e. Arrange the increasing reactivity of the above FIVE metals

(to begin with metal that is least reactive to most reactive metals)
Gold, Copper, Iron, Zinc, Sodium

3. Steel is an example of alloy.

a. What is an alloy?
An alloy is a mixture of a metal with one or a few other elements. (TB page 228)

b. State the elements it is composed of.

Steel is made up of iron and carbon

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 Our Overarching Goals:
Students appreciate applicability of science in other disciplines and in everyday life.
Students develop abilities, skills and attitudes that are relevant to the study and practice of science.
Students use the language and conventions of science to explain and communicate scientific ideas
Students recognize that the applications of science may be both beneficial and detrimental to the individual, the community and the environment.

c. Sketch a diagram to show how the atoms are arranged in the alloy and use the
diagram to explain how the alloy has one physical property that is more desirable
than that of a pure metal.

Iron

Carbon

Note: When you are asked to draw a diagram, please make sure you label your
diagrams.

Alloys are harder and stronger than pure metals.

When a different element is added to the pure metal, the atoms of the added
element have a different size from those of the pure metal.

This disrupts the orderly arrangement of atoms in pure metal and atoms of
different sizes cannot slide over each other easily. Hence, this makes alloys
harder and less malleable.

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