Graeme's Pre-Ap Chemistry Blog

More Gas Laws

We learned a new equation which is going to be very helpful in chemistry. It is PV=nRT. P is pressure, V is volume, n is moles, R is a constant .0821, and T is temperature. We can use this equation to find grams of substance or any of these variables. It was a big help in the airbag lab we did as well.

http://www.fernridge.k12.or.us/jmonegan/2014/02/20/gas-laws/

Here are some more helpful links. Also check out the link above.

Here

Video

Airbag Lab

I was a little nervous about this lab. We had to fill a ziploc bag with baking soda and vinegar to have it puff up, but not explode. We were simulating an airbag. My plan was to take all the measurements of pressure, volume, and temperature that day of the bag. Then I would use that to find the moles of baking soda and vinegar. Then I could use moles to find the grams or mL of product I needed in order to create the airbag. However, I was exempt from the lab because I had to take the AP Physic C test. I was very happy about that. No worries, here is some pictures, though.

http://www.indypl.org/kids/blog/?p=9584

First Quiz

We took our first quiz over the unit the other day. There was stuff on there I did not know so I got a C on the quiz. I don't remember learning about the kinetic theory, so I tried to use my prior physics knowledge to answer the questions. I also forgot was STP was. Now I know that it is 1 atm and 0 degrees Celsius. I guess I will have to study more for the test.

http://clipartcow.com/sad-face-clip-art-image-22745/

Gas Laws Intro

To start the unit, we learned about Charles, Boyles, and Avagadros gas laws. To make the summary a bit shorter, these all can be summed up to the combined gas law which is PV/nT. You can use these proportions to find different factors whether it's pressure, volume, moles, or temperature.

http://www.showme.com/search/?q=derivation%20of%20combined%20gas%20law

http://chemin10.com/combined-gas-law-chemistry/

Check out the link under the second photo or these for more help.

Here

Energy test

We recently had a test over energy and phase changes. I did decent on the test with an 85%. I was hoping for a little higher, but I'm content with that. I had a pretty good understanding of the phase change graph and transfer of energy between phases. So here's some cool pictures relating to this unit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_thru_phase_changes.png

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Chemistry/Phase_Changes

Energy

We have moved on to our next unit of energy. This unit seems to be easy so far and we only have two lectures. Our first lecture was about energy in relation to the movement of energy in a substance.

We use and equation Q=mcT where Q is energy, m is mass, c is specific heat, and T is change in temperature. This equation can be used also to relation two substances to each other if you use mcT=mcT.

http://www.slideshare.net/nmacintoshwqsbqcca/electricity-heat-energy-15979832

https://sites.google.com/a/pleasantonusd.net/barnettdreyfuss/physics/thermo

Boat Race

To finish off the unit, we had boat races with our biodiesel. Most of our fuel decayed, so we all used the same fuel. So it pretty much came down to who had the fastest boat.

My team's original boat, USS Buttstuff, wasn't a very big success. It was build out of duct tape and an empty milk carton. It wasn't sealed properly with tape and the design wasn't aerodynamic.

Our second boat, USS Buttstuff 2.0, was a success. We used an empty can with a hole on the top and a red solo cup nose. It got a final time of 14.9 seconds which got us in 4th place.

I was hoping for better, but it was a decent run.

Biodiesel Lab

In this lab, we made our own biodiesel which we will later use for a boat race. To make the biodiesel my team tried something new and use corn oil instead of the leftover fry oil. We heated the compound which another chemical to make the biodiesel.

Unfortunately, like many other teams, our biodiesel decayed over the weekend, so we ended up using a different fuel anyway for our boat.

It looked clean though.

Biodiesel Movie

My partner and I were to create a short film promoting biodiesel. This film was to be entered into a national contest where we could win about $120.

Our video was about a hero named Biodiesel Man facing his arch nemesis, Dr. Pollution. Dr. Pollution was planning on destroying the world, but Biodiesel Man explained how biodiesel is created and how it has a positive effect on the environment. Eventually he defeats Dr. Pollution and the day was saved.

The video turned out okay since the program I used only allowed for 2 characters and 1 dialogue per character. So it was a little boring, but it had good information.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU_eKFSEGGc

Links:

www.biodiesel.com
www.biodiesel.org
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/biodiesel.html
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/biodiesel.shtml
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/biofuels/biodiesel-fuel/

http://extremebiodiesel.com/

Lewis Structure Lab

We did a lab where we went into the library to work out lewis structures on white board tables. We had to find the structure, shape, polarity, bonding and non bonding pairs, hybridization, and VSEPR formula for different molecules. Some of the molecules included BeH2 and PCl5.