Week 17

In the beginning of the week, we had a few educators from around the state come in and watch our class. They took videos and pictures of us and how we use technology in the classroom. The day that they were there, we were trying to figure out the percentage of water in a can of Pepsi. So we basically took a 100mL sample and distilled it. Unfortunately though, we didn't wait long enough for all the water to come out of it and when massing the Pepsi, we made some errors so it ruined the result. We couldn't accurately measure amount of water that came out. That day, we also learned what a colloid was. A colloid is a mixture in between a suspension and a solution. One that will not unmix by itself but is partially dissolved. We continued discussion about mixtures and compounds and the differences between the two. This took us to the concept of fixed ratios. The ratios of atoms in a mixture do not matter, while they do in a compound. If the ratios weren't the same in compounds then it wouldn't be the same molecule. From there, we moved to nomenclature. Nomenclature is the naming system for chemical compounds. There are a few rules we have to stick by like when there's only one atom of the first element, there's no need to say "mono" before. Rules such as this allow us to name compounds that we don't already know the name of. Also, there are two main classes of elements: metals and nonmetals. When naming two nonmetals, you need a prefix but with metals and nonmetals, you don't. Then we learned that there are some elements that are diatomic, which means they come in pairs. We finished the week learning that volume of a gas and number of particles is proportional. We have midterms coming up, and I'm extremely nervous for them. We'll see how it goes.