Chem Blog Week 23

This week, I learned about atomic charges through a class demonstration. When a classmate rubbed the pen on his shirt, he then held it up to the match and the match moved–without any physical contact. I knew that the reason was because charge but I did not know how charges work a particle level. The first thing I learned was that a charge involves static electricity. We found that this from the flow of Electrons. Electrons are the smallest possible piece of an atom. This means that something is smaller than the atom. The exchange of electrons allowed the pen to have moved the paper clip without touching it. Because we now know that there is something smaller than the atom we have to change the way we draw particle diagrams to represent them at the smallest level. Particle diagrams in the past units could still be drawn the same using dots to represent particles.

Charges occur when the electrons transfer from one place to another. Depending on the charges, they could charge with other things. This is what I learned in the sticky tape lab. In this lab, we tested two pieces of tape: one tape taped onto another tape. The objective was to test the top tape and the bottom tape with other things to determine whether they would repel or attract. The top tape that was ripped off the bottom tape seemed to attract to the bottom tape. Next, the bottom tape was tested with the paper and the aluminum. The bottom tape attracted to the aluminum, but repelled the glass rod. Hence, the aluminum must be positive while the glass rod was negative. Through this example, I learned that opposite charges attract while the same charges repell

ed like a magnet would. This is because if the bottom tape and the top tape attracted together, they have opposite charges because when the top tape was ripped from the bottom tape, the top tape became positive while the bottom tape became negative. So, if the top tape is positive, then it would attract to something negative like the glass.

We also tested the conductivity of certain materials, like brass, silver, iron, zinc, copper, plastic, cardboard, and glass. The equipment we used included two battery sets, wire clips, and a light bulb. We found all the metal products were connected to the wires, the batteries, and the light bulb, the light bulb lit because the electrons flowed through the wires to the light bulb. The nonmetal products, however, did not conduct electricity because the light bulb did not light up.

Like I said in my last blog, this week was full of new things! I understand everything and it was easy to learn. We even had 3 experiments this week! I don’t know how next week will top it!