Accel Chem Quarter 3 Blog Tyler Willeford

     The biggest, most overlying thing we learned about this unit was balancing chemical equations. From here we have broken down into more particular parts of equations and why some don't work. I've said this in past blogs and will say it again; I like this structure for our class. I find it much easier to follow when we learn about the general topic then pick out details and zoom in further on that topic. Balancing equations is something I find easier than many other things. After this, we learned more about the different types of reactions; synthesis, decomposition, single replacement, double replacement, and combustion. I liked this a lot because it really helped me understand why certain reactions happened in certain ways when there were multiple possible outcomes. This ties in with balancing equations and basically our whole unit and I though you'd find it funny, click here.
     Going even further in depth, we learned about the activity series. The activity series is basically a chart and set of rules depicting how reactive elements are and which elements can react with other elements. This FINALLY cleared up the reason for having certain things produce "No Reaction." Although I find the unit already very well planned and easy to understand, I found something kind of cheesy that may help clear up the types of reactions in the future: click here.
     I really enjoyed this unit mainly because we did so many experiments.Also, these experiments weren't the typical boring experiments. We put sodium on water to make fire, used toxic acids, and created extreme results. This is what people picture when they think of chemistry; beakers with foaming or flaming contents and acids burning through metals. It's pretty fun.

Reflection Blog #3

     Tyler Willeford Reflection Blog 3

     In this unit, we started by learning about how you can learn numbers or of amounts of substances based on their masses. In doing so we realized that the periodic table masses are actually relative masses to C12. A fun little lab we did investigating this relative mass idea was comparing how many beans it takes to make X amount of rice grains or popcorn kernels. I didn't really like this exercise, just because I feel like relative mass is a somewhat easy concept to grasp. However, this does make it much easier for me to understand chemical formulas, equations, and compounds.

     I liked the next part of class when we learned about how many atoms are in an item using Avagadro's number AKA one mol AKA 6.02*10^23. I do like when we use examples to show how big of a number this really is, because without representation it is just a number. I found the analogies at the bottom of this page cheeky but also cool and interesting and I think you would too; http://intro.chem.okstate.edu/chemsource/moles/mole15.htm Using Avagadro's number and molar masses to figure out how many atoms are in actual objects is really interesting. We even learned how to use these molar masses to figure out the number of molecules in more complex compounds instead of doing simple boring things like H2O. The mole calculations are fun because it isn't very often that we get to use such big numbers. However, I think using the ratios or conversion factors is unnecessary because what it comes down to is basic math. P.S. Just thought you'd like this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R7NiIum2TI It's funny and cheesy also haha.

     Now we're doing percentage composition problems using molar masses and Avagadro's Number. This isn't so much fun because we have already done percentage composition and we know that there are many ways to reach the same answer. However, I think it would be really cool if we could take it a step further and use our percentage of an element lost in a reaction and figure out exactly how many atoms that is. It would be neat to prove the Law of Conservation of Mass down to the exact number of atoms. In using this method to approximate a chemical formula for a compound, we create what is called an empirical formula. This is a formula that is both found experimentally and written in simplest ratio form. I could only see this being beneficial when creating or discovering new compounds because why would we need to experimentally guess at formulae when we already know them? Overall I have liked this past unit and look forward to expanding on this knowledge.