Week Nine

The week number nine in chemistry was the week we turned in our first project. I did my project with James. We got together and looked up some designs to get some ideas and we found one that seemed like it would work. First, we took a plastic cup and covered it with saran wrap. Then we put a rubber band about the cup to secure the saran wrap around the cup. Lastly, we taped a straw on the top to measure the air pressure. We put a piece of paper with the starting measurement behind it so it would be easier to tell how much the air pressure increased or decreased. When we got to class and tested it out it didn't work as well as it could have. I don't think the saran wrap had enough flex in it. I wanted to improve it so I decided to start over. This time we decided to use a glass jar for more stability and we used a surgical glove instead of saran wrap so it would bend better. We then taped the straw on top like before. This time I wanted to go above and beyond. I decorated cardboard to tape up behind the jar that had measurements on the side and made the sign colorful. We also decorated the jar to make it more catching to the eye. 

This week we learned these problems using pressure, volume, temperature, and number of particle charts that showed the initial and final measurements and the effect they had. When we first started to learn these as a class I wasn't really sure that understood them completely. The morning before we had our test I went in early to get help. After Mr. Abud explained to me how to do it more in detail I started to understand the concept. Now that I fully understand how to do those problems I actually like doing them. Since I'm a math person I love when i can combine math and science.

Week Eight

This week we learned about temperature in Kelvin. We learned that absolute zero is -273.15 Celsius. Frame of refeence is like saying that east is an absolute directions. This is because it is the same directions for everyone. After discussing Kelvin, Celsis, and Ferinheight, we didn't a way to convert one to the other. We discovered that to go from Celsius to Kelvin you do Celsius plus 273.15. To go from Kelvin to Celcuis you do Kelvin minus 273.15. Lastly to go from Celsius to Ferinheight you do two times Celsuis plus thirty two.
I have been using evernote take my notes in class for a while now but one thing that bothered me about it was that when I would want to draw something I couldn't do it. I wanted to find an app like the one that Mr. Abud has. I was searching the droid app store and found this app called handwriting. It has pretty much all the functions of the app that Mr. Abud uses. It has different pages that you can go back and forth from, you can ride in different colors, draw or type, and I can easily save it in evernote in the notebook that I want. I really enjoy all the technology we use in the class and wish that more teachers would allow us to use our phones. I love that I don't have to open my backpack and that I don't have to worry about losing any papers.
On Friday we took an assessment. It was not what I was expecting. Before I got there I was kind of nervous because I wasn't sure if I understood everything that we needed to know. When we figured out that we just had to write everything we knew about each standerd and that we could work with our table, I felt alittle better. I was actually surprised with what I knew. Another thing we did this week that was really fun was when we did the experiment to see if putting glow sticks in cold water actually made them last longer. We figured out that putting them in ice water does help it to last longer but when you take it out of the water you have to put it in hot water to remotivate the particles. The fun part of the experiment was when we cut the glowsticks and the liquid went everywhere.