Final Blog Post of the Year: Week 34

Maddie,

I'm really schocked this is my last Honors chemistry blog post. Has it really been a whole year?  I really did like having Honors Chemistry in the "middle" of the day, The Class, while at times was a bit unfocused,  was really quite interesing and insightful, i  felt that i really LEARNED this year, not  just " learned". I strugged at times to  comprehend the material but ifelt by the end i had somewhat of a handle on everthing we have larned  this year, though i will say this is a creddited to my aweseome group mates Margo, Chris, and John, i would be  nowhere without them. I liek that we actually spent time in the lab instead of just  sitting in class, having Mr. Abud lecture us while the lab was so tantilizingly close yet so far, i also liekd how we all took part in activities like the cookie lab which we all got to do  something ,i wasn't jsut one person, it was the whole class. I'd rate the calss, on a 1-4 scale, a 3.5 because while i feel i did learn as a whole and took away  valuable knowledge in the year i feel that some class periods were utilized  in the ways they could have been. I feel the stard-style aprrach to learning was sucessful nad more pinpointed then other science classes i've been in.  If i went back  to talk to myself in December i'd say " You Will Survive." because i was convinced for a while that all the different stuff with active grade and blogger and google drive a nd twitter would make me tear my hair out in fustartion. But my hair is dstill intact and ive made it through the year sucessfully. Having a phone that was allowed in chemistry was lovely, but distracting. The fact that we can get so much done with   devices does outweigh the fact that we can check social media with the same devices, i cannot say i  never checked my tumblr in class but it was a smal lammount of time in comarison to whewn i was using my phone for science. These blogs, whiel fun to create, did not really improve my learnign experience. Did i make  connections and conclusions using blogger? Yes but I don't really prefer to  use  apps like bloger, but then agian i'm not toally comfortable with posting things and such, as i have only a tumblr and  i dont publish anything on there. Reassesment is the best concept I've had a teacher ever come up with or incorperate into their teaching. There were times when i get fpur 2.5's on my assesments and iwas devastated. But i felt a bit better knowing that i could  study and fix  my mistakes, which were often little stupid thigns that i  overlooked. I could fix things for the better, rather looking at the bad grade and cringing at it. and i liked ActiveGrade, ya know once i  knew how to  work it after the first quarter or so. for  next year, I think i  would recommend stricter policies on devices, liek if you're caught on a social site its a warning then,  and after school session with Mr. Abud, and then lastly you have to use one of his devices that doesn't have the ap pyou wnat in it or whater.  Another thing i wish Mr. Abud would incorpate would be  more review  right before assesments and such but it wasn't bad this year, i felt throughly prepared for most of my assesments.
I'm actually a bit sad about  the end of the year, Maddie, i hope were in a class next year, because you too were one of the reasons i enjoyed chemistry

Here's me in my chemistry shirt!!

Week 32: TEACHER OF THE YEAR!

Madison, can you believe Mr. Abud won Michigan Teacher of the  year? I really believe it's a attestament to the hard work he puts into his job, teaching us. He clearly is an inavator in  the classroom with his new teaching methods ( including phones, in most classes i get a cold stare for looking at my phone, but in Chemistry i use it for worksheets and i have a whole periodic table on my phone, one that icannot lose thankfully).
 Heres a link to the Grosse Pointe Patch  Article about Mr. Abud's honor :http://grossepointe.patch.com/articles/grosse-pointe-north-educator-named-michigan-teacher-of-the-year-4d95c7fb

But dont read the comments, parents in GP can get Dirty and snippy. but i digress. This is a chemistry blog and were discussing the sucess of our AWESOME TEACHER! I really think he's deserving of the honor.

Besides the festivities on thursday we started to get into Thermodynamics, but since we were simply left with worksheets after the initial lesson, the sucess of my understanding of Thermodynamics was nonexistant, unfortunately. T understand the principles of  potential and internal  energy  verses total enery and how one afftects the other and so forth but the other problems on the sheet left me confused. oh well, i can simply ask the michigan teacher of the year!

Week31: Back on Track!

Okay After gettigng all my late work out of the way, i now can focus upon  THIS week's reflection.
We discussed the synthization of copper this week and even preformed it. I sadly wasn't  there everyday ( thanks to AP Exams....) so i don't think i truly understood the experiment.

We started with an Iron  Nail sumperged in copper chloride after weighing out  the copper cloride and adding water. Imediately the nail took on a Red color, assuming the nai lwas oxidizing, or rusting, we  set it in the  corner of the room and left it overnight. i thought it  was cool how  immediate the  change was. When we returned the next day,  the nail was covered in a  red... algae like substance, and  i was worried something was wrong becuase the water was a  urine  yellow color. we  removed the liquid from the   test tube and them removed the nail. the Algae stuff  decreased in size when removed from the liquid, and took on an even briger reddish hue. IT didn't look like rust anymore. we removed all we could from the liquid and from the test ube and offf the nail and Mr. Abud expalined this was what pure copper looked like.

IF the copper was not a solid, what was  the liquid now? We noticed th thee mass of the nail shrunk too, and we concluded  the liquid was  iron chloride, and not copper chloride. this  Synthesis of copper is a warm up to the snythesis of silver, which we'll do and make silver coke bottles next week i am truly excited for this!!

Week 30: I was studying for Exams.

 Last weekend i became best friends with my AP US History Review textbook,  there were two instances  where i fell asleep with it, so needless to say, my prorites werent as rightly alinged as they needed to be, i neglected this Blog.

Now were getting into using BCA Tables to predict how much product we cna create with the reactants we have primarily worked in moles,  how many moles of X and y produces how amny moles of z, but were  branching into more... realistic adaptions going from grams, converting to moles, and them back to rams to get the final answer.
 We did a few problems on this type of eqations.

I had some trouble with this on my assesment on friday, as i get stuck when i comes to the converstions and usually end up with weird answers that differ from everone elses, it's probably because i don't round right or something,

Another issue i have trouble with, Maddie, is identifying the limiting and excess factors in the equation, i mean i get what they do, but to instantly see which is which  is harder for me. I think i need to practice these equations more to fully master them.

I know the picture is kinda sad but i  came from my phone, to find the limiting reactant i usually have to draw out the equation with dots, it's silly but it works for me.  do you have any input on how ot help with this? Thanks Maddie.

Week 29: I'm terribly sorry this is Late.

Maddie, I want to appologize, the last two blog reflections i have done ARE LATE. I know!  I'm a bit off Track with all the material we have been doing!


Though this week, the cookie Lab was due on  Monday and i took on the responsibility of baking, i had gotten back from Canada that mornign so i was a BIT flustered! I followed recipie "F"  which oddly called for three table spoons of Vanilla, while i thought of this a strange, nothing else seemed to out of preportions so i simply kept bakign as  usual. Getting the baking cocoa into the batter was a bit difficult and my dad was adamant about me "blending" the cookies ( i did  it to appease him, dont EVER try it, it was  messy and about 90% of the batter stuck to the  mixers, which guess which lucky gal got to scrape it off? This one.) eventually  we made about 40 cookies or so, out of the supposed 54 it was intened to yield, i thought nothing of it till the next  day.

When we all " sampled" one another's recipes, we could tell when something was... off about some of the cookies, most often in size or color, but in one case a batch of cookies was WAYYY too salty. In the end, we picked the "true" recipe and discussed how excess and  limiting factors effect a  recipe, and  chemicla equations are the "recipes" of chemistry, i feel it was a good way to ease into the lesson.

Later in the week, we worked more on chemical equations, usuing worksheets and learnign about different  "types" of equations, i  find them all so interesting, i really like stoichiometry as a whole, i wonder if you can spend your life doing it? maybe but Mr. Abud says you're graded in college by your precent yield of  experiments and that, that scares me!

  Well i've looked through my phone but  i mustive done soemthign bwith the pictures of the  cookies i made, so i don't leave this blog blank, here's the "actual"  recipe that  we vall recieved  deviated versions for the cookie lab instead!

http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/18476/Original-NESTL%C3%89-TOLL-HOUSE-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/detail.aspx

Week 28: Balancing Equations and Burning Butane!

Maddie,

Happy Saturday! I hope you're enjoying your weekend!

I feel this week we really comprehended different types of chemical equations as well as how to balance them.The three worksheets we got last week were quite helpful in undetstanding chemical equations as a whole.

A Single repalcement is when a ionic compound is broken up by a cation or an anion to form another ionic compound with a different byproduct. A double replacement is where two ionic compounds come togethr and basically flip flop so that the cations are  paired with new anions, and there is no byproduct in this  type of chemicla equation.

Another  part of chemical equations are synthesis and decompsition. Synthesis is where two ( or possibly more)  Ions are put together to for an ionic compound.  An Ionic compoung that returns to it's individual ions is called a decomposition,while thse processes are two sides of the same coin, they are both very different and easy to mix up, i almost putsynthesis when it was actually decomposition on the assesment on friday, Margo noticed the slip up and saved me!

Combustion is my favorite chemical reaction! This is when  the product of the reaction is  Water and Carbon dioxide,  and that's all! I think that it's so cool that there is a seperate category for this reacttion.

Finally Balancing the equations is always about having the same ammount of molecules that you started with  on the left side to end up on the right side,  so i usually draw a diagram with little  dots, some colored  in and osme left blank, to sort out how many of each molecule i need, and to correctly balanace the equation,  during our group assesment, the liuttle tiny dots were how we showed " particle diagrams for each reaction!

   The best part of ChemTeam this week was lighting the  t-shirt strip doused in Butane and becuase of the string, we could "hold the fireball" The fact that  it was burning the butane and NOT our fingers was  the coolest thing  to me! Look at the picture i took, it looks like Mr. Abud can shoot fire from his hands! ( don't make him mad, jk!)

W33k 27: Chemical Reactions, Colecting Hydrogen Gas, and why air bags deploy so quickly!

Week 27

Now that i know Madison is going to start reading this i will adress it to her!


Hi, Madison! Happy sunday! All the chemical reactions we experimented with this week were quite facinating!  Now that we all have a basic grasp on the elemts and ionic bonding, we now an delve into chemical reactions, another important ( and inevitable, things DO blow up!) part of Chemisty.

When we all mixed Clacium with Hydrochloric acid ( as only half of the groups had finished on friday) wek  saw   gas comming from the bottle, as  gas is a common byproduct of a chemical reaction. After testing the gas's combustability, we determined taht the gas was hydrogen and the chloride and calcium bonded to one another forming calcium chloride. The  calcium and  hydrogen didn't form anythign together because they are both positive elements, and because Hydrogen is diatomic and it can bond with itself, the equation balanced itself in the end.

What was happening was the pull between the clacium and the chloride was stronger tha th e pull between the hydrogen and the chloride, so  the chloride bonded ( ionically) with the calcium and the hydrogen to bond with itself asnd become pure hydrogen gas. After becoming both calcium chloride and hydrogen, the byproducts of this chemical reaction were not as harmful as the orginal hydrochloric acid ( whic is a positive  Hydrogen bonded with a negative Chloride) whic can bnurn though skin.

 Later in the week we began to  draw out what  happens in a chemical reaction, with the help of worksheets and skill practives.  there are several types of rections, single reactionsthat only one element replaces one part of the ionic bond and a double replacement reaction  where two ionic bonds swap which element they are bonded two, in the simpliest sense. Combustion reaction ALWAYS produces Water and carbon dioxide, becuase a hydrocarbon  reacts with aon oxygen. Synthesis and decomposion  reactions are oposites of one aother. Sysnthesis is where two elements form to create a  ionic bond. Decomposition is where an ionic bond is broken up into it's elements.


Another important  part fo writing Chemistry formulas is balancing the equation which makes sure that the number of  atoms doesnt vary from one side of the equation to the other. I had some diffuculty with this nadi asked Harris but ifeel he was quite confused with  it himself. Maybe you understand it, Madison, and you can teach me how to  do it correcctly.


Lasttly because we are talking about reactions and such, and because i was geeking out about this, i thoughti should share how airbags deploy so quicky. It's actually thanks to a chemical reaction. Inside the airbag chamber ther is noth Nitrogen gas and a gas called Sodium Azide, which  is one Sodium Atom and three Nitorgen atoms. Because this is an unstable compound, and Nitrogen is diatomic the littlest ammount of pressure ( say a person flying into the steering wheel, not little but there would be pressure on the air bag then) causes the Nirtogen to bond with itself, causing the airbag to inflate  rapidly with nitrogen gas, along with Sodium nitiride ( Na3N). I  saw this on a TV show where a guy got blown into the air by sitting on  an airbag, and scientists expalined how it was possible and such. I thought it waso ne of the coolest things i have seen on TV in a while!!!

Here is the  video of the  man sitting on the airbag  that  Scientists were trying to explain the science behind :http://www.youtube.com/watchv=uUZJkti1A3M

 

 

 

Week 26 : noman clature for naming substances

In the past week we have finally started discussing how to.name substances besides ionic bonds,  we actually introduced a new type of ionic bond called the Polyatomic ionic bond where more than two elements bond together to make a compound that can with mix with other elements to become neutral substances . We also learned that to make an acid you must add a positive hydrogen bond to certain ionic and polyionic bonds to make acid.

Other than the rules above, the process is the same as we learned when we were dealing with simple ionic bonds, including the transition metals and their different levels of positivity ( they are always positive because they conduct electricity ) making the work this week very do able I hope we can further our knowledge upon this topic, as I feel  I.have finally begun to make my own breakthough of sorts on this topic

Week 26 ChemTeam beach party!!!

In honor of spring break at GPN, we paused our progress learning about charges and ions to have a Beach Party! We traveled down to Mr. Amore's room and we actually did two seperate yet equally cool experiments!

First we learned why sunsets are red, yellow and orange versus blue green or purple. As the light from the sub travels through more and more atmosphere , the shorter wavelengths ( blue, green, purple) cannot pass through the atmosphere to our eyes because they are short. The red, orange and yellow wavelengths are long enough though to travel through the atmosphere to our eyes. I found that so fascinating and I explained to my family his they work the next morning as we were getting up at the crack of dawn to go travel.

The other "experiment" we completeted is we "made" a fire pit to roast marshmallows on by adding 5 ml of Calciaum Acitate ( if I remember correctly) and 20 ml of alcohol to create this little blob that looked similar to wax and we then lot on fore to roast the mashmellows with. The marshmellows were good but lacked the smoky flavor wood burning fires do. Overall I think it was a very sucessful beach party! Happy spring break!!

Week 25: Elements Have different Charges.

Week 25

W hile in the process of discovering what's behind the mystery of electyricity, we uncovered that particles at least have negative, electrons within them and a surplus and or a diffiency of electrons causes an repulsion or an attraction between the two substances. As  both substances need the other to stay neutral  they form a strong bond called an Ionic Bond. Above is an example of How NaCl, or salt is formed. Sodium has an extra electron having a surplus of  electrons and a negative charge. Chloride hasv a diffiency of electrons and has positive charge. Together, the one negative sodium atom and the one positive chloride atom cancel the chrges out becoming a neutral  sodium chloride molecule.

Sometimes it takes more than one  of each atom, as the charges vary. the charges are +1 +2 +3 +/- 4
-3 -2 -1in that order wit ha last column that is neutral. With  each ionic bond there is at least one Cation (+) and an Anion (-) the Cation always goes first when writing out the Formula name. The Anion always changes its name so endss  with "ide", this is how we know  the name of  of salt is called Sodium Chloride and not Cloride Sodide or anything like that.  So without the use of  any real positive  particles, we can explain ionic bond soley with a surplus and or a diffiency of electrns.

Week 24: New Unit 6 and the evidence of Charges

WEEK 24

In this Past week,  Our ChemTeam has started a new project to Possibly explain how certain things, such as a match, can be "pushed" or "pulled"  without a physical push or pull, which we hypothesised would be static electricity, or the  attraction  and repulsion of negative and positive charges. Using Tape, ALuminum Foil , paper and a glass rod, we did find that there was some wort of attraction and repulsion we couldn't see with a naked eye.


We  discussed if there  really were 2 different types of particles at all or if there was merely a diffiency of one partice that was transfered. The concention of this duscussion was to  test which process was actually happening. We later found out that at the subatomic level, little electrons, which are negatively charged particles, attract  electrons and repel protons. We also discovered the glass rod we were using was negatively charged so we could then easily  decide if an object was negatively or positively charged.

Week 23: Empirical Formulas and Applying Constant Ratios.

 Everyone knows Water is H2O right? How did we figure out that it was a 2:1 ratio in the first place? Well, Water ( H2O) as most know it is actually in its impirical form. Empirical form Is where the Lowest ammount of Atoms is expressed while stil maintaining to show their Constant Ratios. H2O has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atoms because while Oxygen is heaver and outweighs Hydrogen, the Molar Mass of Hydrogen is 2x that in oxygen in this compound. Knowing the Empirical Formula is super important!

Another Formula that we learned this week was the Percent Composition Formula, which taught us to figure out just how much of  each element was in the compound, the formula is the Molar Mass of the element over the Molar Mass for the entire compound multiplied by 100, For example if one wanted to find the percent of Oxygen in H2O one would put Oxygen's molar mass ( 16g/ mol) over the total Molar Mass of the compound ( 18g/mol) so the formula becomes 16/18 x100 which is 89%, so Oxygen makes up 89% of the compound water.

The final big, new thing we learned this week was how to put empircal Formulas to use. If you know how many  of each atom is needed to make a compound, you can multiply it by ANY NUMBER and still find the answer. We were testing this idea with NH3 in class. Mr. Abud was doubling or tripling the numbers and i was kinda perplexed because not everything is so simply doubled. He said that was the next step because not everyting in Chemistry is textbook perfect, or all even numbers. We tried working with decimals and found  that when multiplied by a deciaml theratio between the N, The H and the NH3  remained unchanged, i really felt likei grasped the concept because that day there were a lot less ppl in the class and the class felt more personal. I hope we delve further into this topic as i really find this interesting and fascinating as the  ratios do actually remain constant

Week 22: Constant Ratios in Chemistry.

In the past week, our Chemistry class has focused upoon a certain  chemical ratios that are constant undrr different situtations. This means that Water will ALWAYS be 2 Hydrogen molecules and 1 Oxygen atom because of Constant ratios. This means that if a certain chemical is made up of these ammount of atoms, theratio of one atom to another will not change, ever. Watter can only be 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atoms, if the ratio is not 2:1 then it is not chemically water. H2O2 is in fact Hydrogen Peroxide

We proved the existance of thses constant when we  performed electrolysis with our own mini kits, similar to the illustration above, but without the ballons to collect gas, we sinply had test tubes. After pouring water and an anti corrosion agent ( that stung bad when it was upon my hands) we began to  crank the Genacon and send positive charges to one pole and negative charges to the other pole ( we unfortunately did not know which pole was which, but the above illustration can shed) some light upon which pole is which,) and  we began to ( slowly) sepertate the oxygen and hydrogen out of the wateer and into separate  test tubes. We ended up with 1 ml of Hydrogen and 1/2 ml of Oxygen, while the ammount of gas our group had collected was small, the ratio of 2:1 was the same among all the groupsi n the classroom.


We further proved that ther was 2 times more hydrogen   than oxygen when found out how many moles per gram of hydrogen and water there were, finding the ratio was still 2 to 1. While the mass of Oxygen dwarfed Hydrogen,  Hydrogen was still 2x more abundant when collected from electrolysis proving that there is a constant ratio for chemical substnaces NO MATTER WHAT. If it's  H2O its water, and nothing else.

Week 20 Reflection: Week of the Mole!

Happy sunday! It's ChemTeam  Reflection Time! Instead of  my normal blogging format ( which i learned is not a good grade on the new grading scale) I wanna focus on the principal we focusedo n the last wekk before break : The Mole!. I'm not  talkign about the creatures that dig in the ground i mean the magical number that  is alo called Avagadro's Number ( for the scientist who kickstarted reasearch that later lead to the discovery of the mole) is  6.022 times  10 to the 23rd power! This number is a specific number of particles so 1 mole of ANY Substance has 6.022 times  10  to the 23rd power  particles within it. In class we calculated that there arent even 1 mole of living cells on earth! And also  there  has not even been one mole of rice produced yet!And if there was 1 mole of sand on earth, every inch of the surface would have 75 meters of sand on top of it! Molar mass is how many moles are  within a certain weight of a substance expressed by the formula: G/ 1MOL.

Having been so highly interested in this new concept, I went hope and told my parents the more interesting facts i learned about it, as they already knew what a mole was. In fact my mom said they had T-shirts from their chemisty class in high school that had Moles on them, the furry ones but it was a paly on words! I did find a picture of my father in his Mole shirt but unfortunately  My uncle  had decided to wear scary short 80's shorts in the picture so it is unfit for the internet! I wanted to understand Moles further so i went onto the internet and found a video i found quite helpful, basically summing up out lesson on friday!

In the Video  the speaker explains that the  number of Atoms of 1 mole of ANY Element has 6.022 time 10 to the 23rd atoms. Another interesting point the speaker made  was that if you have1 mole of NaCl the Molar weight  is the molar weight of Na and the weight of Cl  TOGETHER! I thought that was really helpful and interesting! I'm really excited to use moles in chemistry now!

Week 19 ( attempt number two)

 The blogger app ate my first draft of this post!  I hate technology sometimes, I'd rather be a ludite, honestly, but alas I was born in a time where i grew up with computers, i didn't see them  come into being.

Week 19

Happy Sunday!

Unfortunately we had no school on fiday due to imcliment weather ( YAY!) and so it is acceptable to assume we have an assesment monday. ( Not as excited about this part.)

This past week we started applying Dalton's theory of diatomic molecules and finding out which elements were diatomic ( such as Hydrogen and Chloride) and  which were not. The theory is useful in figuring out chemical equations if you know which molecules contain two atoms instead of one. We conducted an experiments this week  to prove if Cloride is a diatomic element and we mixed hydrocloric acid with zinc in a flask, and as a result clollected some combustable gas and water vapor. The oxygen in the air reacted with the hydrogen in the air creating water vapor and the other byproduct of this chemical reaction was zinc oxide.

Week18

11:25 pm

Finally back into the daily grind and it feels.. refreshing? For the most part. I'm chemistry I feel we are finally shifting from simple basic ( and fundemental) principles to my complex theories and really getting into chemistry. I honestly believed that some idea we learned in first semester wouldmt actually apply to the chemistry I was hopine we would get to do but this week really showed just how the baclinga are.connected.to chemistry nd how they support it.

We assessed for the first time in over two weeks on Friday and I felt quite confident, even with the question pertaining to Daltons theories upon constant molecular ratios within a substance or compound.

I an quite excited for this new semester. I know I am going to rock at chemistry! Not that I. Didn't before but still!

Week 16 : the crunch time before midterms begins

Our first challenge of this was to seperate sand salt birdseed and iron filings. This was so we could exploit the properties of matter. Our attempt did work in the end but it took several tries. We discussed the different properties of water and ethonol and discussed how we could tell which was which. Then upon Friday we touched the surface of the process called diffusion and we seperated ethonol from water and lit it on fire. I hope this week is as just as exciting

Late nite Blog #15

Yes I should.be asleep but  guess who is not.and decided to write the blog.reflection this late. Well let's.take a trip back to yesteryear to when week 15 took place. That week we.made soaps in class! Yay! We all used soap bases to make our soaps but each soap was different, because we all received different out comes. Margo and I.made.delightful lemongrass tea.soaps which looked very nautral and organic.although we had a. Few problems with bubbles and  the soap being a bit mushy. Overall I saw the project was a success, bubbles or otherwise . With all the presentations, it took us.till Friday to get them done and then on Friday we ( attempted) ice cream in a bag. I worked with Chris and eve though we poured a lot of salt to break up the ice particles and cause the salt particles to suck energy from the surrounding air causing the. Ice to become.super cold, we got milk shake consistency, oh well :/ it was still my favorite project of the year !