Week Fifteen

This week we made soap! My partner for this project was Richard. To get the supplies we went to Michaels and got soap base. There were different kinds but we went with goats milk because we thought that it would make softer soap. I was in charge of picking out the scent of our soap and I was pretty proud of my decision. It was called tropical temptations and smelled awesome. Making soap was actually easier than I thought it would be. All we had to do is melt the goats milk soap base, which I was paranoid that it would burn so I made sure that we kept stirring it. After all the cubes  melted which took a while because we had two bars of soap melting at once, we added the extras. We first added the coloring, we decided we wanted it light blue. We carefully put in one drop at a time making sure that we didn't put too much in and finally got the perfect color after about 10 drops. Then added the scent to make is smell good and just like with the coloring, carefully put in one drop at a time so we wouldn't over do it. We stopped after a few drops just to double check that it wasn't too much because we knew that we would always add more but we couldn't take it out. Instead of getting a special mold we just brought in plastic containers and used them as our molds and it worked out well. We poured the melted soap evenly in the containers and then decided that we wanted to make them alittle more fun. We ended up getting another color and swirled it in the blue with a Q-tip and let them sit. We realized shortly after that our soaps started to freeze. When I left the room that day I smelt like a bunch of different scents from looking and smelling other classmates creations. The next day after they were hard we wrapped them. I didn't put mine in a bag; we just tied bows around it and it was ready to be given as a present. My soap is now next to my sink in my kitchen waiting to be used.

   

Week Eleven

This week our thermos project were due. When we first got this assignment I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to make it. So I started doing some research online about what were good insulators that I could use to keep the cup warm as long as possible. Katie L. was my partner and we kept exchanging ideas until we came up with a rough idea of what we wanted to get. For the supplies we went Lowes. We went searching around the store trying to find some metal cylinder that fit our vision. We ended up finding a metal cylinder and a smaller one to go inside the bigger one where the cup of water would be secured in. To close the top and bottom of the metal cylinder we found drain caps that we put foil and tape over to make sure the holes were covered up. We then cover the entire thing with tape and foil and then another layer of tape. to insulate the our thermos further we packed the empty space between the two metal cylinders with newspaper and tape. When we got to class we had some trouble getting started bc our water would not get all the way to the starting temperature, which was eighty degrees. Due to that we didn't get to take all thirty measurements. When we finally got the hot water inside our thermos it started off well but eventually started going down a few degrees which made Katie and I panic hoping that it wouldn't go down anymore. We realized that since we covered our lid with so much foil and tape and newspaper that the top wouldn't go all the way on. That could have been part of the reason our water cooled off alittle. I never really understood how thermos' kept liquids so warm but after this experiment I can understand how they work better than I did before.

Week Ten

This week in chem we started with a question that made me think. The question was whether a little hot water or a lot of room temperature water would heat up water more. Originallly I thought that the answer was alittle bit of hot water because it was the temperature was so much higher than the room temperature water. After doing the experiment with our groups I realized that my hypothesis wasn't acturate and that the a lot of room temperature water increased the temperture of the water more.
In our class mixing up heat and energy is an issue. Before this lesson I didn't even know there was a difference and I always just said heat because no one ever said when water was in the microwave isn't not just increasing its temperature, energy is being transfered to the water. We even made a rule that whenever someone mixed up heat and energy they would have to give the chemteam a dollar.
In an article we read as a class the word atom was used but that word doesn't exist to us yet because we haven't proven that they are. All we know is that that is what people say.