Mole Day 2015

On Friday, October 23, we celebrated "Mole Day" in class. I made a "Cave-mole" and I actually thought it turned out pretty well. Everyone else had clever and very cute ideas about what to make their mole as. We were given a pattern beforehand which made it a lot easier to figure out and I used a sewing machine, unlike other people, which took a lot less time. Seeing all the moles on the back table at the end of the day was amazing because our ideas and interpretations were so different and that was really interesting to me.

Below you can see all the fabulous moles everyone made from most classes:

Changes Activity

Last Wednesday, we went into the lab stations and completed a fun, yet challenging activity to reinforce what we had learned in the lecture just a few minutes before. We were told to go to each of the eight stations and solve each substance with the already given elements, solutions, and mixtures in their specified column. I really enjoyed science in middle school and we had worked with chemical and physical changes frequently, so this came as sort of second nature to me. It was also a great idea to immediately review the topic covered, especially in a creative way, using common objects and using the help of a partner of our choosing.

Below you can find a few of the stations we had to go through and attempt to solve:

Dimensional Analysis Lecture

Today, we went over the dimensional analysis portion of the chapter which felt like a review for me because I had done it recently during Trigonometry. After that, we reviewed density briefly and also learned the conversion for Kelvins. I found that to be the most confusing because I had never used Kelvins before because I had only ever used conversions for Farenheit and Celcius. The test is Thursday which is very soon, so today after I go home I will definitely reviewing all our information so far and maybe complete a few practice sheets and quizzes.

Below is the review sheet we were given tonight for practice:

Aspirin Lab Anxiety

Oh my goodness, I am extremely nervous for Cristen and my turn to complete the lab on Wednesday. Only one group in our hour successfully completed the pre-lab question, meaning only one group out of the five were able to actually complete the lab at all. Because of this, I will make sure to study the lab instructions very carefully and know the entire procedure inside and out. If I am able to do the lab, I feel that it will be a fun and interesting learning experience to deal with harsh chemicals and to be a part of making real aspirin. But, if I do not pass the pre-lab, then this experience will be taken away and I will just be given raw data with no explanation.

Here you can see a very helpful video of what I will preparing for in the next few days.

Post-Unit Reflection

Today we took our Unit assessment over chapters 3 and 11. I felt pretty good about most of the questions and the test didn't take me too long to complete. Since it is the end of the unit, we now need to have completed our guided readings, blog post requirements, and our most recent project about elements in the stars. It was definitely a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time, but it was all a good way to teach us to manage our time and keep up on daily happenings. Tomorrow we will be previewing the aspirin lab, which we were supposed to do a few weeks ago, so I am very anxious to see what we will be preparing to do on Monday!

Forensic Archaeology Lab (Graphing and Post Lab)

Yesterday, we completed the graphing aspect of the lab. My computer was not loading fast enough, so I got behind very quickly and was scrambling at the end to complete the graph. The actual graphing was simple, but the process of editing the graph was very technical and required a lot of different steps. Then, we were told to use our graph to complete the rest of the lab to find the missing person. Cristen and I concluded that it must be Sue Crayton because her body and time of death fit most with the amount of decay. I thought it was pretty cool that we combined forensics with chemistry even though someone had to die in order for us to do this...:). We were told them to complete the rest of the post-lab questions, so I will finish those tonight and then submit them to SCHOOLOGY.

Here you will find the post lab questions and data table we had to complete:

Forensic Archaeology Lab (Data Collection)

For this lab, we were told to gather 1 sheet of 12x12 paper, 2 pairs of scissors, 1 ruler, and 1 plastic cup. After getting the materials, I was very curious to see what we were actually going to be doing with all of these things. We were to draw a 24x24 grid on the white side of the paper using the ruler and after, should cut them all out individually. This proved to be a very tedious task. When done cutting, we threw away 9 squares immediately in order to have the necessary 567 total squares. We put the squares into the plastic cup and shook it up, then poured them out on the desk. Then, we separated the squares into two separate piles- white side up and orange side up. After the separation, we counted the number of atoms that decayed (orange side up), recorded that data, then subtracted that number from the starting number of squares (567). For the next decay, we threw away those that landed orange side up and put the white side up ones back into the cup to repeat the process. We repeated this 6 times total. Even though most of the work was tedious, I really enjoyed this example of decay because I was able to visualize the half life process. Tomorrow we are going to be graphing the data collected, which is exciting because, for some reason, I really like to GRAPH, and here's a link to a brief preview for tomorrow.

Here you can see the pieces of paper used to complete the lab and the data collected.