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!