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.