Week 21

This week in Chem, we continued our exploration of counting particles. In the beginning of the week, we continued our work from last week counting the number of particles in a certain amount of something. To count these particles we use moles. We practiced by using dimensional analysis to make sure our units came to cancel out and leave us with whatever we needed to find. So we came to possibly one of the coolest experiments we've done so far, in my opinion at least. We electrolyzed water, separating molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gases. To do this, we had a trough filled with a sodium hydroxide solution and two prongs sticking in the water. We placed test tubes filled with water on each prong, and connected two wires to the bottoms of the prongs under the trough. These wires were connected to a genecon that we consistently spun. The test tubes began to fill with hydrogen gas in one, and oxygen gas in the other! We went until we had 7.0mL of hydrogen gas and 3.5mL of oxygen gas. This proportion also proves that the water formula is H2O. There was double the amount of hydrogen gas as oxygen gas. We could then find the number of particles by again doing the dimensional analysis to find how many moles in each. We found that there were 1.6x10^-4 moles of oxygen, and 3.2x10^-4 moles of hydrogen. Another proof of the formula for water, H2O! It shows us how the empirical formula works out to be H2O with double hydrogen as oxygen. We finished the week off with an assessment covering everything we've done the past 2 weeks, and I feel very comfortable with it. I'm starting to like how we're learning more like the other classes have and am curious to see how the rest of the year plays out.