Vitamin C Lab

This lab was a blast. It was very cool to be dealing with household liquids rather than a bunch of chemicals that I don't know. We had to take a variety of liquids like:apple juice, V8 juice, pear juice, and grapefruit juice along with starch and determine which one had the highest and lowest vitamin C concentration. It was one of the more enjoyable labs, hopefully we will have more like this one.

Locating Electrons and Electron Configuration

I am loving this unit so far. The less math and calculations, the better. In this lesson we learned about how to locate electrons and I understood it with ease. First you would locate the principle energy level, which is basically which row it was in going across the periodic table. Then you would find the sub-level it is in. There are four sub-levels: S,P,D, and F. After that, you simply counted the number of elements into that sub-level to locate your beloved electron. All of these components were used to make an electron configuration. For example: Oxygen has an electron configuration of 1s^2 2s^2 2p^4. The lesson was enjoyable and easy, what a blessing.


Wonderful Video Regarding Electron Configuration

Additional Video That Also Reviews The Specific Rules And Principles That Need To Be Followed

Wavelengths and Energy Calculations

This lesson had something very rare. It contained some information that I had prior knowledge about. I cannot remember a lesson where I could recall knowing something that I had previously learned before. This information was the basics of wavelengths. The good ole spectrum that listed the wavelengths in order of smallest wavelength / most energy to the least energy / longest wavelengths. It was quite refreshing to see something familiar, but with that came many new things. Calculating energy and wavelength with frequency didn't seem to difficult, but all of the equations got confusing and could sometimes be hard. In conclusion, this is still my favorite unit, and it is still fairly simple.


Calculation Help

Very Useful Source For Entire Lesson And The Electromagnetic Spectrum

http://9-4fordham.wikispaces.com/file/view/em_spectrum.jpg/244287321/em_spectrum.jpg

Spec. 20 Lab

Yawn. Oh sorry, I just got done with the Spec. 20 Lab. That lab was almost as exciting as my nap. I had a dream that I was sitting in class watching a knob get twisted left and right, left and right for what seemed like a couple years. This lab was the exactly the opposite of the Flame Lab. Hey, I guess they all can't be as exciting as color changing flames. We collected a bunch of pointless information regarding transmittance percentage and absorbance after redundantly recording way too many numbers. I pray that we leave labs like this in the past, and do something more exciting from here on out.

Info About Transmittance And Absorbance

Periodic Trends

The final lesson before our big unit test concerned me a bit at first. Throughout the lecture I thought that this lesson was very hard. After reviewing it over, I realized there was only one huge key concept that you needed to remember. That was this magical little picture / graph showing the periodic trends and which way they increased based on the periodic table. It had them all: ionization energy, electron affinity, metallic characteristics, and the atomic radius. All of these trends were very important, but you really only needed to know which elements would be more or less compared to each other based on the direction of those trends.

Fantastic Source To Better Understand Periodic Trends 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/PERIODIC_TRENDS.jpg

Flame Lab

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.25458624.7071/flat,550x550,075,f.jpg

This was by far the coolest lab we've done yet. Seeing the fire change colors was extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. It was like magic inches from my face. I hope to do more labs with fire in the future.

New Unit, New Me

I am putting the last two units behind me. Let's just say that the last two units resulted in the words grades I've ever seen in my life. The test scores I was getting were unheard of. I am really going to work hard for every thing in this class. I am going to put way more effort into making sure I thoroughly understand every concept of every lecture. I will study harder and more than I ever have before. I have to get my abysmal grade up, it's not a option.

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/62/ca/32/62ca3261296d6572ed9558822f10cceb.jpg

Terrible Is An Understatement

Boy oh boy.. How am I supposed to describe this test. I cannot think of a word that would accurately describe this poor of a result. When I asked my pals to guess how bad my score was, they would say 60% or maybe 50%. You can get a sense of how bad I did when I tell you that I would've been throwing a party if I got a 50%. Maybe I should pick a higher lucky number or something because I got my football number. A 22%.... I have no more words. Just throw this one in the trash physically and mentally and move on.

http://www.anr.state.vt.us/dec/wastediv/solid/urs/images/trash.jpg

Arrhenius Acids and Bases

This lesson was jam packed with important information. It was a lot to take in, but I think I understood it pretty well.
The products are the same in Arrhenius acid/base reactions, a salt and a water. The strength of the salt is determined by the strengths of the parent acid and base. The compound "salt" is formed from the anion of an acid and the cation of the base.
Water can act as an acid because it can donate a proton, and it can act as a base because it can accept a proton to form the hydronium ion. An equilibrium is established in the process called, the auto-ionization of water. We then had to calculate the H+ and OH- required for certain examples, which was a bit easier than I thought it was going to be. An overall pretty good lesson.

Details About Arrhenius Acids/Bases

Very Useful Documents Over Calculating H+ and OH-

Conjugate and Strong Acids & Bases

These conjugate acids and bases come in pairs. Acids produce conjugate bases and bases produce conjugate acids. A conjugate acid is the substance formed when a proton is added to a base and a conjugate base is the remaining substance when a proton is lost from an acid. An example would be HSO4- + H2O producing SO4^2-  as the conjugate base and H3O+ as the conjugate acid.

Strong Acids are acids that completely dissociate to produce H+ ions in a solution, weak acids don't completely dissociate. There is a list of strong acids such as Perchloric, Chloric and Hydrochloric acid. The rule is that the Oxygens have to outnumber the Hydrogens by 2 or more for the acid to be strong.

http://02.edu-cdn.com/files/static/learningexpressllc/9781576854846/Aqueous_Reactions_04.gif

Video Over Conjugate Acids and Bases

 

http://www.wiley.com/college/pratt/0471393878/student/review/acid_base/conjugate_pairs.gif 

Titrations and Buffers

Titration is a technique used to determine the concentration of an unknown acid or base. It was helpful to know what titration was since we would be referring to it throughout the entire unit. In most cases we would need to find the concentration of the analyte by titrating the unknown solution. The chemical reaction was complete when a color change occurred in the analyte. This indicated that the endpoint has been reached. You knew how accurate you were by calculating the difference between the equivalence point and the endpoint, which is known as the titration error.

Very Helpful Titration Information

Titration Calculation Help 

Characteristics of Acids vs Bases

 Acids                                                                           

• Taste sour
• Feel sticky
• Pink/Red Litmus paper
• Produces hydrogen ions
• Increases amount of H+ in a solution
• Breaks apart HCl-
• 1-6.9 Ph 
•  Bronstead-Lowery
• Donate protons (H+)
• Produce conjugate bases after the acid protonates

Bases

• Taste bitter
• Feel slippery
• Blue Litmus paper
• Produce hydroxide ions
• High OH- concentration=High Ph
• 7.1-14 Ph
• Bronstead-Lowery
• Accept protons that the acid donated
• Suck in H=
• Produce conjugate acids 

 Acid vs Base

http://www.dlt.ncssm.edu/tiger/diagrams/acid-base/pH_scale.gif

New Type of Lectures

This unit we really started using lecture supplement sheets more and more, and I loved it. It wasn't better just because we didn't have to write a ton, but they were more beneficial for the student. I used to be so focused on just copying down every single word on the smart board. Now, I could direct my attention more towards how the problems were being executed. I felt that I absorbed more and learned more this way. I hope we continue to use these beautiful pieces of paper to enhance our learning. Hopefully, this will translate into better test scores. :)