Mole Day: Project and Party

My initial thought of this entire subject was "What? Are you serious?". I was wondering why on Earth we were SEWING a mole for chemistry class. My parents were also baffled at the idea. In all, it was pretty fun. I had a fairly good idea being my MoleZOU (A Mizzou Mole) except that I am not the best seamstress, and that resulted in a not so great looking mole. Everyone said it looked much more like a fish than a mole. I spent a lot of time on it for people to criticize my fish/mole. :( Their were some fantastic and creative moles that I saw on Mole Day, and the party was awesome. My friends and I talked about Fantasy Football and ate a whole lot of yummy treats. It was a delightful Mole Day.

 Importance of Moles in Chemistry

Pre Test Thoughts After The Lesson

This time I wanted to combine some of the confusions and unknown information from the pre-test with the new things I learned from the lesson. The biggest topic that came up throughout the test was significant numbers. I was thinking that I could have a pretty good guess at what they were, but once I got to learning what they actually were in the lesson, I found out I was way off. There are many rules to these significant figures making it hard enough, but then you have got to deal with addition and subtraction. That adds a whole new level of confusion to this lesson. Overall, I think I am getting the hang of it pretty well, and I feel pretty good about the quiz on Monday.

Rules with Significant Figures, Adding and Multiplying

Significant Figures Practice

Archeology/Half-life Lab

For this lab there was no question. That guaranteed me getting to participate in this one. That being said, we ran out of class time so my partner had to take it home and collect the data. It turns out that I didn't really get to do another lab. Which might've been a good thing since this lab seemed very strenuous. We had to cut out over 500 squares and then my partner had to take those small squares home and imitate a decaying process. He had to dump all of the squares out and count how many landed on the color side. The other ones were decayed in a sense. The lab was a great way to think about half-lives and the decaying process differently. Hopefully the next lab will be more fun.




Handy Dandy Half-Life Calculator
 Half-Life Practice Problems
Additional Notes on Radioactive Decay and Half-Lives 
Types of Decay Notes

Beanium Lab

Well this wasn't the best start to the pre-lab questions. I was one of the few who answered incorrectly and ha d to sit out on the lab. I had simply forgotten the formula to calculate the average atomic mass and I had to guess. I guessed wrong and had to pay the punishment of sitting out of the lab. I didn't get the privilege of actually doing the lab, so I had to use data that Mrs. Frankenberg gave us. I am going to make sure I get the question right next time.

Steps on how to find the average atomic mass