[LindsayMontayne]

Hi,

I am new to the forum. I am a high school chemistry teacher and also a lead curriculum developer with Michigan state trying to pave new units aligned with NGSS. I am in a pickle. I designed a unit under the phenomenon that salt is a compound safe to eat but the elements that comprise it are, by themselves, explosive, dangerous, or toxic to living things. Towards the end of the unit I want the students to look at energy binding data. My pickle is that I can't find any binding energy data that isn't associated with fusion or fission of the nucleus or anything that is on a high school level.

Following is a description of the main activity of the lesson that this data will be used for:
"Students will work in groups to look at binding energy data for the main group elements. Students will look at the energy changes before and after elements exchange electrons to become ions. Students will use this data to draw conclusions about atoms becoming more stable when they become ions due to the energy decreases."

 Does anyone know if any such data even exists and where might I find some that high school students could understand and use?

 

[mjc123]

The term "binding energy" is usually used in reference to nuclei, rather than chemical bonding. I would use the term "bonding energy" in your description.
All the energy terms needed for a Born-Haber cycle - evaporation energy of Na, ionisation energy of Na, dissociation energy of Cl₂, electron affinity of Cl, lattice energy of NaCl - are easily available.

[Corribus]

I generally use the CRC to acquire this kind of data, but a good free online source is the NIST Chemistry Webbook (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/), as it is generally reliable and well referenced. Honestly though for high school level exercises Wikipedia is probably a good a source as any and most students will be familiar with how to use it.

[Vidya]

Binding energy of Ist group /II group elements means you are looking for ionization potential values  of these elements .