Week Six

In the past week, we have done no labs, just class experiments that Mr. Abud has lead. We have just been taking notes and learning new concepts. In the beginning of the week, we started with a block of dry ice that Mr. Abud moved around. The vapor coming off of it showed the particles that were leaving the system. This showed a solid going straight to a gas form, which can be described as sublimation. Then, Mr. Abud cooked a bag of popcorn, that we sat and waited for the smell of it to reach our seats. That day we learned that particles are always in motion, whether matter is in a solid, liquid, or gas state. With solids, particles are always in motion. In liquids, particles are always in motion, but heat makes them move more quickly and coolness makes them slow down. When we talk about particles moving, they can move translationally, rotationally, and vibrationally. Also, the particles can slide past each other, which brought us to the concept of fluidity. Fluidity is the physical property that enables something to flow. Liquids and gases have fluidity while solids do not. The opposite of fluidity is viscosity, which is the resistance to flow. The three states of matter, obviously, have different densities. Solids are the most dense, then liquids, and lastly gases. These densities may have a role in the fluidity/viscosity of each. We also learned a term-Brownian motion-that describes how particles move in all different directions. To finish the week, Mr. Abud lead an experiment in which he placed two test tubes filled with water or ethanol in a beaker of water on a hot plate. As the water heated the tubes, we saw how the ethanol rose above the stopper into an additional type of tube. The ethanol rose higher and faster than the water, meaning that the ethanol had more particles that were moving faster and had more fluidity then the water. Lastly, we came to the conclusion/consensus that all energy is just simply energy. It is only stored and transferred differently.