Welcome to chemistry! We will have a full year of learning the language of this foundational science. We will start off the year understanding the structure of an atom the characteristics of elements by investigating atomic theories and periodic law. This is the foundation for the whole course, like learning the alphabet of a new language. From there come the topics of bonding and compounds which result in new physical and chemical properties. This will be like us using our alphabet to form words. From there, we will move on to using the Law of Conservation of Matter to understand chemical reactions. This is like combining our words to form sentences. By the end of the semester, we will be able to form “chemical sentences” and have a good foundation to apply for the rest of the year. For second semester, we will understand the concept of a mole and use stoichiometry to further understand chemical reactions. We will then learn about thermochemistry, mixtures and solutions, gas laws, and reaction rates- understanding what is happening on a molecular level and how that affects physical and chemical properties. We will then explore the properties of acids, bases, and solutions, followed by exploring redox reactions. Throughout our course, we will learn in a variety of ways- labs, group work, writing, etc. I am looking forward to a great year!

August 19

We started off chemistry this week by receiving our textbooks and taking a look at expectations, procedures, and safety guidelines for class. We received some notes and classwork that will guide our unit for the next few weeks and help organize our notebooks. Then we started to investigate a mystery of a burned towel. In doing so, we reviewed some science terms like parts of the scientific method, variables, quantitative and qualitative data, and units of measurement. After this we went through a series of stations related to the burned towel. At station 1, we used graduated cylinders and scales to measure the density of the bathroom tile affected by the burn. At station 2, we took data about the towel itself, measuring the area. At station 3, we practiced designing an experiment to try to determine what might have caused the fire. At station 4, we considered 4 different clear liquids that may have been involved and measured their density. And at station 5 we watched a few videos on chemical and physical changes as well as flammability. We will finish these stations next week. We took a few minutes to introduce the concepts of percent error, significant figures, and rounding to help prepare for next week. Here is link to the slides we used today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1h9uGCr3hIX_9CPmFdejS_RKrsqqg9xPw1F7GrvjvpoQ/edit?usp=sharing.

August 26

This week we started by reading an article on flammable items and considered which ones might have contributed to our mystery of the burned towel. We reviewed a few of the topics we introduced last class period and then finished our stations and hit the highlights together as a class. We reviewed new data from our mystery and learned about the process of mass spectrometry to finally conclude what substance was responsible for the catching the towel on fire in the bathroom. I handed our instructions for an essay that students will write this week defending why it had to be the nail polish remover that caused the fire. We went on from here to take some notes on accuracy & precision, significant figures, rounding, and graphs. We tried out our ability to distinguish between different types of properties and changes and will take notes and experiment with these next week! The slides that guided our class are here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZofauQFVzlZZ1AsbyqwKnAlTISeVQjcZ6W0mNqMc-E8/edit?usp=sharing