Measurement Unit Test

The test wasn't entirely hard but it was tricky. While I was working the worry of: am I doing this right continuously ran through my mind. I'm hoping for the best though! #sigfigs

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Sig Figs

The sig fig lesson was almost a refresher. I learned them at some point in my schooling career but forgot it all from years of not using it. Sig figs in general would probably piss of any math teacher in this school because it defies every rule we have learned in math. It is confusingly simple. If you need a refresher here is a link! 

Sig Fig Refresher

Asprin Experiment

Aspirin Lab

The last two days I have been creating Aspirin in the lab. Aspirin is a synthetic organic derived from salicylic acid. In the experiment acetic anhydride is added to a measured mass of saliylic acid in the presence of a catalyst (sulfuric acid). The mixture is heated to form acetylsalicylic acid and acetic acid. After cold water is added to destroy the excess acetic anyhydride and cause the product to crystallize. Below are some photos from our experiment! 

 Day 1: Heating the mixture of salicylic acid and acetic anhydride.

Day 2: Filtering out the crystals from day 1.

Day 2: Photo of our product in the Buchner Funnel being dried out. 

Helpful Links for Test!

While I was studying for the test tomorrow I found a couple of online resources that helped me fully grasp some of the ideas of the Unit! They are listed below.

Half Life
Radioactive Decays

Hope they help you guys!

Forensic Archaeology Lab

Today in class we made excel graphs depicting how radioactive elements decay over time. The entire lab was an overview of half-lives. We cut up 567 tiny paper squares and pretended that they were atoms. We jumbled them up and poured the out and the papers that had the colored side faced up were considered to be a decayed atom! We would remove them and redo the process! It was a very tedious lab, although it did help me get a full understanding of half-lives!

Heres a link that helped me undestand!  http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli.html

Beanium Lab

The Beanium Lab was made to help us realize that not all atoms are the exact same for each element. There are many different types of Isotopes for each element. We essentially counted out different beans and used them as examples of different isotopes and got different masses for each bean.
 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CA

We were able to calculate the average atomic mass for the element "Beanium" by using the Atomic Mass Formula.

http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Average-Atomic-Mass
Helpful Link for Atomic Mass Averaging:http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Average-Atomic-Mass

Atomic Structure and Radioactivity Quiz #1

I didn't think the quiz was very hard, a lot of it was memorization. Not much application besides a few of the math problems. Good start to this new chapter!

http://blottytinesrunemagic.blogspot.com/2012/04/runes-of-fire.html

Heres a hands on activity that reviews how to calculate average atomic masses! http://algebralab.org/practice/practice.aspx?file=Algebra_AverageAtomicMass.xml