Monday, December 17, 2012

PowderAde Virtual Lab

Solutions are created when two different things are mixed together, and they end up mixing permanently. In this online lab, a solution is created when the powderade was mixed with the water. Different concentrations are made when there are different amount of powderade added to the water, or there is a different amount of water mixed with the powderade.  
In this virtual lab, Mia’s drink had a higher concentration of sugar/ powderade, however Diego’s was consuming more sugar. As more water was added into each drink, more powderade had to be added.
There was a unique way of doing the math to figure out how much powderade needed to be added to the water.
Overall, concentration matters with however much water and powderade there is present. Solutions are created when different things are mixed to make one thing. Also, a variable that affects concentration is how much powderade/sugar is added to the amount of water there is shown.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Sodium Silicate Polymer



Sodium Silicate Polymer

How will sodium silicate affect the strength of the polymer?

If we add sodium silicate to the ethyl alcohol, then the polymer will be stronger, because the water is being taken out and being replaced by the ethyl alcohol.

First, get safety goggles. Then get 3 mL of ethyl alcohol, and 12 mL of sodium silicate solution. Then, mix them together. Stir them until they are evenly combined. The mixture will be crumbly. Combine the mixture into a sphere so it will stick together. When done, clean everything up. 


The similarities between this polymer and the polymer last time is that with loss of water/ moisture, something new will form. They also have similar structures. They are different because they consist of different elements. Both f the polymers are mixable/ moldable, and they both have properties that make them bounce. Plastic and silicone polymers are similar because they are both moldable, bouncy, and hold their shape. A chemical reaction took place when the two liquids were mixed, because right as they touched, a reaction had already started to take place. The liquid is water because the water makes it crumbly, but when the water is taken out, the solution becomes a solid. My polymer was the biggest and most spherical.
 

In the end, I accepted my hypothesis. In my hypothesis, I stated that the polymer will become stronger once the water is taken out, which is exactly what happened. Some things that could have differed could have been the amount of ethyl alcohol or the amount of sodium silicate.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Cross-linking Elmer's Glue with Sodium Borate

Cross-linking Elmer’s Glue with Sodium Borate

What will happen when the properties of polymer are changed?

If the different properties are added to a polymer, then the links will change, because more elements are being added to the polymer.

First, get safety goggles. Then, get 100 mL of water and add a tablespoon of borax to the water. Stir this mixture until the borax is almost dissolved. In a seperate beaker, get 25 mL of glue and add 5 mL of water. Stir this mixture. Then, add 40 mL of the borax mixture into the glue mixture. Stir until the glue and borax mixture looks like a ball of slime. If there is any extra water, dump it out. When done with the experiment, clean up the table.

After the water was added to the glue, the glue became very liquidy. When the borax was added to the glue mixture, it became harder. When stretched slowly, the slime stretches for a little bit and then breaks. When it is stretched slowly, the slime immediately breaks.

Slime is visco-elastic because it is very bouncy. A physical properties that changed was the consistency of the slime. The effect to adding more borax would be a very liquidy ball of slime that wouldn’t stay together very well. Water affects the elasticity because it breaks down the elements in the glue.


In the end, I accepted my hypothesis. I stated that when a polymer was added to a different property, the links would change, and in this experiment, it did just that. One thing that we did wrong, that could have affected our experiment was that we didn’t stir the glue mixture and borax mixture enough, but we dumped out the extra borax mixture, because we thought it was finished. When we found out we hadn’t stirred it enough, we just put plain water in the glue mixture, instead of putting the borax mixture in there. With the super-absorbent polymer balls that were shown before doing this experiment, it was a similar way of showing how polymers cross-link. It was similar, becuase with the super-absorbent polymer balls, the polymer balls had grown to the state at which they would stay at. With this experiment, when the two mixtures were combined, they ended up staying in one state.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

ChemThink; Chemical Reactions

1. Starting materials in a chemical reaction are called reactants.

2. The ending materials in a chemical reaction are called products.

3. The arrow indicates a chemical change has taken place.

4. All reactions have one thing in common: there is a rearrangement of the chemical bonds

5. Chemical reactions always involve breaking old bonds, forming new bonds, or both.

6. In all reactions we still have all of the same atoms at the end that we had at the start.

7. In every reaction there can never be any missing atoms or new atoms when the reaction is over.

8. Chemical reactions only rearrange the bonds in the atoms that are already there.

9. Let’s represent a reaction on paper. For example, hydrogen gas (H2) reacts with oxygen gas (O2) to form water (H2O):

H2 + O2 → H2O
If we only use atoms shown, we’d have 2 atoms of H and 1 atom of O as reactants. This would make 1 molecule of H2O, but we’d have 1 atom of O leftover. However, this reaction only makes H2O.

10. So to make H2O from oxygen gas and hydrogen gas, the balanced equation would be:
2 H2 + 1 O22 H2O
Which is the same as:
# of atoms in Reactants
Element
# of atoms in Products
4
H
4
2
O
2

11. This idea is called the Law of Conservation of Mass.

12. There must be the same atoms and the same number of mass before the reaction (in the reactants) and after the reaction (in the products).

13. What is the balanced equation for this reaction? 2 Cu + 1 O22 CuO

14. In the unbalanced equation, there are: Reactants     →     Products
Cu atoms 1           Cu atoms 1
O atoms 2             O atoms 1

15. To balance this equation, we have to add CuO molecules to the products, because this reaction doesn’t make lone Oxygen atoms.

16. When we added a molecule of CuO, now the number of CuO atoms is balanced but the number of Oxygen atoms don’t match. Now we have to add more Cuo atoms to the reactants.

17. The balanced equation for this reaction is
2 Cu + 1 O2 → 2 CuO
This is the same thing as saying: Reactants         →    Products
# Cu atoms 2 # Cu atoms 2
# O atoms 2 # O atoms 2

18. What is the balanced equation for this reaction?
1 CH4 + 2 O2  → 2 H2O + 1 CO2
# of atoms in Reactants
Element
# of atoms in Products
1
C
1
4
H
4
4
O
4

19. What is the balanced equation for this equation?
1 N2 + 3 H2 2 NH3
# of atoms in Reactants
Element
# of atoms in Products
2
N
2
6
H
6

20. What is the equation for this reaction?
2 KClO3  2 KCl + 3 O2
# of atoms in Reactants
Element
# of atoms in Products
2
Cl
2
6
O
6
2
K
2

21. What is the equation for this reaction?
4 Al + 3 O22 Al2O3
# of atoms in Reactants
Element
# of atoms in Products
4
Al
4
6
O
6

Summary
1) Chemical reactions always involve breaking bonds, making bonds, or both.
2) The Law of Conservation of Mass says that the same atoms must be present before and after the reaction.
3) To balance the chemical equation, you change the coefficients in front of each substance until there are the same number of each type of atom in both reactants and products.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Chemical Reactions and Heat Lab

Chemical Reactions and Heat Lab

How will temperature affect a chemical reaction?

If the temperature is higher, then a chemical reaction will take place faster than other temperatures, because more energy is being released.

Get safety goggles. Set up Logger Pro by clicking on the Logger Pro folder. In this experiment, a beaker was filled with 266 mL of room temperature water. Then an alka-seltzer tablet was dropped into the water, and the information in Logger Pro was started. Wait until the tablet dissolves, and stop the information. Continue this with the hot and cold water. With the cold water, put 5 ice cubes into the beaker, then add water until it reaches 266 mL. When finished with the experiment, clean up the table.

This picture shows the alka-seltzer dissolving in the water.










This graph shows how fast the alka-seltzer dissolved in room temperature water. The tablet took 36.9 seconds to dissolve. The dissolving point was 22.2 degrees Celsius.
This graph shows how fast the alka-seltzer dissolved in cold water. It took 1 minute and 47.6  seconds to dissolve. The dissolving temperature was 2.4 degrees Celsius.
In this graph, it shows how fast the alka-seltzer dissolved in hot water. The tablet took 22 seconds to dissolve. The temperature at which it dissolved was 99.5 degrees Celsius.








This graph shows the difference between hot water, cold water, and room temperature water.











In the end, I accepted my hypothesis. I stated that the alka-seltzer would dissolve in the hot water faster than the cold water, and that is exactly what happened. A problem that almost occurred was bad timing and communication. Some variables that could have been changed would include different temperatures of the water or more alka-seltzer tablets in each beaker while the experiment was taking place.



Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Examples of Chemical Reactions


In the first experiment, it showed an example of combustion. My hypothesis stated that when the flame was put close to the bottle, the bottle would actually catch on fire. My prediction was wrong. A 2-liter bottle was filled with ethenol. The liquid was then emptied, but the gas was kept in the bottle. Then a flame was put close to it. Once the flame was exposed to the gases of the bottle, the bottle flew off the table.
The second experiment showed an example double displacement. In my hypothesis, I stated that if vinegar was mixed with the baking soda, and the gas would be put over a flame, then the flame would cause the mixture of vinegar and baking soda to bubble up even more, because there would be more energy. However, what really happened was when the gas of the baking soda and vinegar mixture was placed over the flame, the flame blew out. This happened because the flame needed oxygen to “live,” however the flame was engulfed with the gases produced from the mixture, causing it to go out. The molecules around the flame area changed, which caused the flame to burn out.
In the third experiment, it showed an example of single displacement. In my hypothesis, I predicted that when the iron would be put into the water, and lit on fire, it would start to bubble. My hypothesis was correct, but the iron also caused the water to change color, and the iron started to dissolve. The bonds of the hydrogen and chlorine broke, making it single displacement.
The last experiment also showed an example of combustion. I stated, in my hypothesis, that when the hydrogen peroxide and soap was mixed with the potassium iodide the mixture would start to bubble. My hypothesis was incorrect. What really happened was that the mixture started to foam up very quickly. It also produced a lot of heat. When a hand was placed over the foam, the person could feel the heat rising from the foam. The reason this is combustion is because there was heat released.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Greatest Discoveries: Chemistry

Early scientists only believed there were four elements: Water, fire, earth, and air. However, Leonardi da Vinci changed that idea. Then, new chemists came along and figured out, that there is much more to Earth than those four elements. Joseph Priestley discovered the idea of oxygen, and how there is much more than just “air.” Then Antoine Lavoisier, in a way, made oxygen. Soon. John Dalton came along in the early 19th century, and found that elements must be made up of different elements, these elements are now known as atoms. He made his idea useful, and called it the atomic theory. The system was simple, but effective. Jospeh Gay-Lussac experimented to conduct the atomic theory. Amedeo Avogadro realized gases were made of multiple atoms, instead of just one. Dmitri Medeleev constructed a card for each element. He began putting each element in a specific area, making the elements closest together, similar. In this way, the periodic table was discovered. This discovery forever changed the meaning of elements. One day, Humphry Davy was constructing an experiment with pot ash. As he was melting the pot ash, he found it was melting into pure potassium. Soon, chemists started studying why substances emitted specific colors when placed in a flame. Then, chemists started building the very first spectra-scope. With the spectra-scope, chemists were now able to see spectrums of sodium in the sun. Joseph Thompson found the mass of an electron. He soon found a stream of rays and named it radiant matter. The ray was a stream of electrons. Soon, Gilbert Lewis explained how electrons travel throughout an atom. Henri Becquerel conducted an experiment to see which minerals were radioactive. He found Uranium to be the most radioactive. Marie curie carried on with his ideas, and discovered new radioactive minerals called polonium and radium. Ernest Rutherford found alpha and beta particles, and he also found gama rays. In the 1860’s, John Hyatt created the first plastic from plants. Leo Baekeland continued on with this idea. Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Sean O’Brien, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley found a special cluster of carbon atoms, which they named Bucky Balls. Soon, carbon nano-tubes were found. These tubes were 100x stiffer than steel. They call these carbon atoms a modern day industrial revolution. and, it will soon be possible to build things from scratch that are much stronger than things used today. Overall, chemistry changed the world.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Freezing and Melting of Water

Freezing and Melting of Water

If salt is put into ice water, then the water will freeze, because salt expands the freezing water causing more ice or cold water. When the freezing water is put into the warm water, it will melt.





<-- This shows how the water starts to freeze









This graph shows how the water freezes over time. As seen, the huge peak is shown after the water has become frozen. The water’s freezing point was -3.5.

This graph shows how the water melts over a period of time. The huge peak is when the frozen water is put into the hot water. The water’s elting point was1.6.

In the end, I accepted my hypothesis. The water became frozen while in the freezing water, and it melted after being put into the warm water. A problem that occured with our expirement was that we were stirring the salt, however we did not stir enough to make the salt fully dissappear. Some variables that could have differed this lab would have been putting a different amount of water in the water and putting a different amount of water in the test tube and beaker.