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