Reflective Blog #8

Reflective Blog #8

This blog actually covers a week and two days because of the previously extended blog that I am very grateful for.  So this blog starts on Thursday when we learned about the heating curve by doing a lab with ice and hot plates.  We use the graphing program to graph the temperature vs. time and found that the graph plateaus as it changes phases and then shoots up as the temperature increases. We learned that it takes a lot of energy from the hot plate to change phases which explains the plateau in temperature on the graph.  Then we started LOLing our way through energy bar charts, we used them to model energy leaving or entering an object.  This is a good way to model this because you can see how energy is moving with out doing any hard equations. While learning all of this we did many problems and worksheets, usally whiteboarding them and presenting our work to the class.

One of the more complicated energy bar chart problems

Once we had a handle on the barcharts we upgraded to quantitative problems.  These use the formulas Q=m*c*delta T , Q=m*Hv and Q=m*Hf where Hf is heat of fusion or the energy in joules (J) per gram needed melt or freeze (334 J/g) and Hv is the heat of vaporization of the energy in joules per gram need to boil into a gas something or to condence it into a liquid (2260 J/g). The other variables are a little less complicated m is mass in grams and delta T is the change in temperature but c in the heat capacity of either liquid water (4.18 J/gC) or solid water (2.1 J/gC).

Basically all we did was learn how to do this stuff and then apply it to doing lots of worksheets to at least know how to do the problems but we did learn a hole lot.  Some other things we did this week were talk about our final on monday and how we can use our notebooks on the final. while doing these problems I tried to help as much as possible to be useful but Lizzie would often have th problem done before me.

This is my last S/G chem blog and I'm sad I won't be in your class anymore Dr. Finnan.

Reflective Blog #7

Reflective Blog #7

This week is actually a little longer than an actual week but that doesn't matter.  I am very thankful for the longer time to work on this week's blog.  We did a lot of learning and reviewing of the things we just learned because we had a unit test yesterday. On Monday we talked and white boarded about the relationship of temperature and volume.  Temperature directly affects volume and pressure if the number of particles remains the same, higher temperature means bigger volume so less pressure but the thermal energy also increases pressure. So it all depends on what's being increased and by what amount.  We also learned about PVTn tables because they are one of the easiest ways to solve PVTn problems.  If you use one of these tables the equation that you use the x -------- formula.  We also learned about the arrows, these tell us the affect of temperature. number of particles and volume on the pressure and that we should let this be our guide doing PVTn problems. One of the days we took 4th hour where are we now boards and fixed them up, gave them a little love, and added what we thought they had missed.  I really like this way of reflection as it reminds me of all the things that we did through the unit.

This was the board we worked on and 

We did many worksheets working on using the PVTn tables so we could master them before the test. We did lots of this kind of practicing where we would do one problem as a table and then we would present it to the class who would then ask any questions that they had such as why did you do it that way.  This is one of my favorite ways to study mostly because I really like hearing the stuff we learned.  Then the test, it wasn't very hard for me and I think that I will do very well but the last PVTn table I might have gotten wrong because I may have flipped the numbers on one of the line.

Some of the other things we did this week not connected to the upcoming test were working on the report for the PTVn labs.  This report is one of the harder assignments that you have given us and I plan on working on it a lot in the upcoming days so I can turn in my best work.  We also turned in our notebooks but since you didn't have us do anything until now you didn't grade them hard and I got full credit even if I don't think my notebook was full credit worthy.

Basically this week was learning for and studying  for the test we just took.  So the stuff we learned this week was basically how to use a PTVn and if I had to rate my understanding of the things we learned this week I say it's about 98% understood.  My participation wasn't stellar this week because Fedor was always trying to do everything himself with no group input.

We also watch iodine turn from a solid to a gas in a process called sublimation, which was cool.

Iodine gas

Reflective Blog #6

Reflective Blog #6

This is my sixth blog already and its gone by so fast and I've been learning so much and having lots of fun doing so.  Last Monday we blew Luke up.  Actually we blew up the bag underneath him and raised him up nusing the power of pressure.  When we put more particles in the bag they needed a place to go and the bag grew and grew until Lukes back wasn't even touching the table anymore.  When there are more particles they hit the bag harder and expanded it.  We also decided that we should also make molecules have some sort of motion.  We also worked on this Tuesday befor the PVTn labs

This was are molecule diagram of luke on the bag

Tuesday was when the fun really began with the PVTn labs. But as soon as we tryed to start logger pro magicallly removed itself from the computers and we were left to do nothing for the rest of class but talk.  Then on Wednesday it finally happened  we started the lab.  Fist lab we did was the pressure vs volume, we learned ho the more volume you have the less pressure you have and vise versa but this is proportional to the amount of volume and there can't be zero pressure and there can't be zero volumeso it makes a curved line.  This prinicpal we learned was called bolye's law.  Then after that lab we did the pressure vs number or puffs.  This graph had the shape we expected it to as it went followed our predictions.

On friday we did the last and final PVTn lab, this was centered around tempuature we set up the graph which was slightly more complicated than the other ones to set up.  Then my group started and after the first two we realised tha some thing wasn't right with our data and you told us that we would just have to steal someone else's data because the seal was broken.  But we did learn about kalvin and absolute zero where kalvin hits zero pressure and there would be no particle movement, which would be cool.  The number for absolut zero was something around -273 and that we have come so cose to absolute zero by margins of a fraction of a degree

On Friday we talked about how we're going to do the formal lab report and we started to print the data on the laptops and talking about when this big project is due and other logisticy stuff.  We had slight technicanl issues printing the graph but all was resolved.

I saw this article in the new issue of Popular science and thought you would like it.   http://www.popsci.com/z-machines-hydrogen-gambit

 

Reflective Blog #5

Reflective Blog #5

This week was one full of big tests and lots of reviewing.  The one big test that we took only in chem was the unit one chapter test and that one was pretty easy at least for me it wasn't and a hard one that took up half of our day.  On Monday we presented our boards of what we had learned through the unit, our boards were filled with stuff like sig figs and volume, mass, and density. This review was nice because some of the stuff we covered I had either forgotten about it or needed a refresher about it.

This wasn't my group's board but this was the group I thought did the best job of review

On Tuesday we took the big test, I while feeling prepared couldn't help feeling a little nervous about not getting a very good grade.  For me it was smooth sailing through the test and only one problem tripped me up but I skipped it until everything else was done and solved it later.  When looking at my grade I am a little mad that I was a half point off from a perfect score but am happy for the good grade.  After the test I was really bored so I took it out on a mechanical pencil, completely  stripping it and destroying the innards.

On Wednesday there is almost nothing to report, we just sat around in Mrs. Warner's room eating our lunches and sitting on our phones.  On Thursday though we did 2 fun activities.  First we smelled popcorn and whiteboarded how the smell particles moved across the room and while we white boarded that we ate popcorn then we presented them to the class.  After that activity we put food coloring in hot and cold water and saw which one moved faster.  The hot one moved faster and we concluded that warmer molecules move faster than cold ones

our white board for how the smell particles moved across the room

On Friday we finished whiteboarding how the dye moves through the water in cold and hot situations and presented them to the class.  Also on friday we watched some videos and went over how mass is always moving and how they move in a solid and liquids but didn't get to gases at least not in my class.  So all in all this week I learned a few things like how molecules move and we gained the ability to call them molecules, so it was a good week

Reflective Blog #4

Reflective Blog #4

This week in 3rd hour was full of learning and quizzes.  We as a class did a lot of worksheets and one or two activities as table groups. First off on Monday we finished up whiteboarding worksheet 3 on number five and finished it up.  My favorite question of this packet was the question about the ring and if Alicia should dump her boyfriend for giving her a phony ring, I'm pretty sure the class decided that she should dump him.  Even though we never did question eight we still moved on.  Tewusday we did an interesting activity of find the density of a gas.  Our first atempt was foiled when the bottle in the water tipped.  I think this happened because we had around a pill and a half so it made more gas then the light bottle could trap so it erupted from the bottom and tip over.  We found that the density of the gas was nearly 600% less dense than water so when we did a particle diagram it was less than 1 to 600 but we learned to draw gases with very few particles

The gas rising to the top of the bottle

On Wednesday we did worksheet four where we learned to find mass or volume with density and either mass or volume depending on which one you were given in the first place, this method is pretty easy to remember how to do. We did a lot of the problems on the back with you going over them afterwards. This was very helpful to me as it is less likely to be done wrong than other equations.
Thursday you had told us that we were having a test so the night before I made a quizlet set and studied it for a little bit, it was a nice review to me.  The actual test wasn't hard at all and I aced with ease. At first you accidently handed me Bobby's quiz and I thought I had done horrible but then me and Bobby switched and everything was alright, for me at least. After the test we did an activity to find the thickness of aluminum foil and we had to come up with procedure first.  We found the mass and took the density of aluminum to find the volume and the took the two dimensions that we knew to find the thickness we did have a little computing error but we fixed it once we found out,  It was so thin and the heavy duty was about 1.5 times thicker for most data.

My table's data and calculations

Friday you gave us another quiz and gave us back our old ones. This quiz was just as easy as the last one and I'm sure that I ace it too.  After the quiz you handed back and went over the reading scales worksheet.  Tables were assigned questions and went up to the board and wrote the answer, other poeple were allowed to come up and write their number if they thought the group was wrong.  I really liked this way of reviewing because it meant you could disagree and vioce your opinion or correct mistakes. All in all this week was fun and their was lots of learning


 

Reflective blog #3

Reflective blog #3

This week was a week full of learning in 3rd hour as we learned the correlation between mass and volume and the relationship between cubic centimeters and mL.  With all this new knowledge in my brain I shall reflect on what I have learned and refresh my memory.  On Monday we started to discuss the relationship between cubic centimeters and milliliters. we did this by pouring some water into a rectangular, clear box and found the volume of the water, then we poured the water into a graduated cylinder and found how many mL it was.  Our table got a line of best fit with a slope around .940, which is pretty close to the 1 we would have gotten if we had done the experiment perfectly, I account this to human error. We would have gotten a 1 because one cubic centimeter of anything equals 1 mL of the same thing.  We didn't a formal white board meeting but you did go around and talk about each tables data yourself. This also carried over into Tuesday. 

My table's data from the activity

After we were done talking about cm3 and mL we talked about mass and volume and how they relate. You had us start getting the mass of the 3 different materials which were aluminium, steel and acrylic each with five different pieces of various sizes. Then on Wednesday we did the volume of each materials in graduated cylinders by taking the before and after measurements of the water. then at the end of Wednesday and beginning of Thursday we used the tool logger pro to help graph our data and put in lines of best fit for all our data.  We then talked about how  density is a combination between volume and mass, we also learned that since waters g/mL or measurement of density anything higher than that sinks.  A funny thing that happened on Thursday was that halfway through the class we were asked to go to a thing where we meet the counselor and because of that the remaining juniors and seniors didn't have to do the worksheet until the next day.

My table finding the volume of a steel cylinder

This worksheet that I previously mentioned above was what we focused on for most of Friday.  Basically what we did was, you'd ask us as a table to do one or two problems and then we would whiteboard our answers.  We did this for questions 1, 2, 3 and 4 but for 4 we did a class debate over who was right.  Almost all of the other side changed their minds and the few who didn't couldn't back up their opinion with evidence.  The other questions that we white boarded were all about comparing mass, volume and density.

My table's answers for number 3

So all in all this week we learned about how density is affected by volume and mass. Plus the unit for measuring things density in g/mL.  I have to say that this week was a good week not to miss or I would have had a lot of catching up to do. 

Reflective Blog 2

Reflective Blog 2

This week was a week chock full of stuff to reflect on since we did many things like lots of white board meetings and Pogils.  First off on Monday we did a bunch of board meetings on the experiments we did  starting off with the burning steel wool.  My group, except me didn't try to come up with an explanation so they decided to just draw particles on fire instead of any actual reaction (I actually looked this up online and figured it out) and then made me present it because they all agreed that I looked the smartest there fore should present that we had no answer.  But this helped me learn in the way of leadership because then I made sure my group always had an answer and that we didn't talk to much.

Our diagrams of none flaming and flaming particles

We did several of these white board meetings on Monday but none worse than the the first.  Another on we did was the Alka-Seltzers on where everyone got about the same answer about how gas leaked out of the loose lid.  We also talked about the sugar cubes and how we all had almost no change in mass and sometimes everyone just gets the same answers.  My group actually was an outlier on this on because we forgot to but the cap on the scale at first.  We also did the precipitate mass and change and everyone's data was mostly similar to each others with a few being slightly different but made up to human error.

our precipitate diagram showing the particles mixing 

Wednesday we started our day with new seats which I didn't mind and we started our Pogils which as group work meant that we had to actually talk to the people at our group.  Our group reader was Lizzey (I don't know if that's how you spell her name) Bobby our presenter/recorder and Hannah our technician and Me the manger.   Our first Pogil was about how to properly record measurements Lizzey was gone most of the time the rest of us worked very efficiently to finish the pogil and it paid of as we finished time and were able to start the next one the same day.  But  more reflecting, we learned how far out we should estimate and how to estimate. the second one and the harder of the two was the on on sig. figs. and how to identify them.  This one I think was harder because it wasn't a very good explanation of it and some confusing questions, but despite all this my group still worked efficiently and since Lizzey was back we were even more well oiled. We were then asked to put our answers on a white board but since people weren't as fast enough we didn't have enough time to do a whit board meeting for this. After that Lizzey and I were sent to help one of the other groups and we did so successfully and they finished and had learned their mistakes before the bell rang. 

on Friday we did so more learning and review on Sig. Figs. and this was nice to just sit and listen to the teacher explain it because this is one of the ways I learn best in a classroom. We then measured the meniscus of graduated cylinders and had a white board meeting using what we learned from the Pogils to estimate the last digit or two and my group actually got pretty close to your measurements but as you said anyone could be right.

the graduated cylinders we measured