Chem Blog Week 8

While this week was stressful, I had a bunch of fun in #ChemT3am!

This week, we learned about pressure affecting the motion of a medicine dropper using 2-liter bottle filled with water–one with the opening welded shut and the other in an open system. I learned that as we squeezed the pop bottles, the medicine dropper went down because the volume decreased, making the pressure increase. So, these two factors caused the force to go upward. As the force reached to the top, there was even less volume to go up, since the dropper  provided some resistance, so the force went downward since it was exerted onto the medicine dropper. But, since one was in a closed system and the other was in an open system, the one in the closed system went down easier since nothing went into the syringe needle and resisted going down. However, in the open system, there was upward resistance in medicine bottle since some water got into it, but it wasn't enough to prevent the downward force since it had greater pressure than the upward resistance, thus causing the dropper to go down.

I also learned how the temperature affects the motion of particles in glow sticks. My group and I experimented with the different temperatures of water and put the glow sticks in the water.  We put 3 glow sticks in 3 different temperature conditions: warm water from the burner, water with ice added and room temperature water. We found that the relationship between the brightness of the glow sticks and the temperature is that as the temperature increased, the brightness increased because the temperature increased the motion of particles. However, the glow sticks in the cooler water didn't glow as much because the particles were more closer together, didn't move as quickly, and didn't move greater distances. So maybe that is why the package said to keep it away from heat because if we kept putting it hot water the glow stick company would go out of business!

When we were reviewing our previous labs, Mr. Abud gave us a challenge to find the point of temperature where there would be absolutely zero movement in particles. We came up with a very close temperature to the actually temperature of -273.15°c. We were then told that this temperature is called Absolute Zero. This is the point when there is no movement with particles and it is measured in Kelvins.

This weekend we were given the assignment to create a barometer out of household materials . A barometer is an instrument that measures atmospheric pressure, and how it works is that the liquid (water for my barometer) inside of it expands or contracts depending on the amount of pressure. We also learned about the manometer. A manometer measures  the difference in pressure from atmosphere to a system of gas, which is how the two instruments are different from each other.

This past week was a very busy one because it was the last week of the quarter. But chemistry was the only class I was not losing sleep about. When I am class I learn so much and since we don’t receive homework I am able to have the information settle in my brain instead of it spewing out on a worksheet. Even with the experiment given, I was able to finish it within an hour and it only took that long because I was making it “fancy”.