Chem Blog Week 20

This week, we learned about the mole and it’s used in chemistry. In class, I did an experiment with my group. The goal was to compare the mass of 1 item to all the rest. The items were an empty bottle, small brown nails, hexnuts, pennies, screws, washers, bolts, and panel nails. To do the experiment, the first item we measured the mass of was the empty bottle. We found out it was 9.5g, and since all the elements had to stay in bottles, we subtracted 9.5g from all the rest of the total masses to find the masses of the small brown nails, hexnuts, pennies, screws, washers, bolts, and panel nails.

We had to choose one item to compare to all the other objects. Since the small brown nails had the least mass, we decided to compare it to the other items, and we found the ratios of their masses to the small brown nails. The picture above shows the data. The small brown nails had a mass of 1.3g, the hexnuts 18.9g, the pennies 11g, the screws 10g the washers 23.6g, the bolts 7.1g, and the panel nails 4g. The small nails to hexnuts were 1 to 14.5, small nails to panel nails were 1 to 5.46, the small nails to pennies were 1 to 8.3, the small nails to washers were 1 to 18.15, the small nails to screws were 1 to 7.69, and the small nails to bolts were 1 to 5.46. Therefore, I have concluded that small nails were the smallest, and the washers have the largest mass since the ratio between small nails and washers was the greatest.

I still felt unsure, though, on particles and how to count them. How can I represent them in a group? This question was then answered as I learned in class that for every mole, there are 6*10^23 particles. Thus, the word mole is the collective group of particles.

We found out that like this lab, this was how scientists found the atomic masses of the elements. They compared it to hydrogen, which has the smallest atomic mass, to all the rest. Also, the overall concept I learned from this was that there can be some way of calling 6 pieces of hardware to 1 collective group (e.g. 1 dozen=12 items). 1 dozen would be the collective group. So, we came up with a collective group name for the 6 hardware pieces: the Quinn. Therefore, proportionally speaking, for every Quinn, there are 6 hardware pieces and vice versa.

With this information we are able to plug in information like an algebraic equation and easily find an answer!

Overall this week feel okay with what I learned. I understand the concept, however, I am having a little trouble with the calculating of moles. I should be able to understand it with some practice.