Accelerated Chemistry Reflection Blog #1

It's been an exciting beginning to the school year in Accelerated Chemistry!  During the first two weeks, I, along with the class, learned about the basics of chemistry and science in general by performing multiple labs and discussing these topics during class.  Some of these basics include: matter, mass, physical and chemical changes, and measuring volume.  Using these principles, along with other previous knowledge, we, as a class, will explore more in-depth topics in the weeks to come.

On the first day of school, my group and I constructed a boat that consisted of simple materials, such as cardboard, plastic, duct tape, and straws.  Since each material had a separate cost, our goal was to be able to float the most pennies on our boat for the least amount of money.  My group used cardboard, straws, and regular tape to construct our boat.  It ended coming in second place in our class.  This experiment wasn't necessarily meant to teach us about a certain topic, rather to introduce us to how we would be working in groups often and presenting our findings and thoughts.

The next activity we did during class was a lab on mass and change.  In this lab, we picked our groups and performed several tasks in which a substance or object underwent some sort of change.  Both before and after performing each task, my group had to weigh the substance or object.  After this we determined the change in mass and drew pictures of the activity, both before and after, to show changes.  Through this lab, I learned about systems, surroundings, and mass.  A system is the part of the universe that we a focusing on.  In the case of the lab, the system was activity that we were doing.  Surroundings are anything in the universe other than the system.  In this case the surroundings were everything thing around us during the experiment.  Finally, I learned that the mass of an object is represented by the number of particles in that object.

After this lab, we took the knowledge we had learned and started discussing some other topics.  Because we already had learned about what mass was, we could now use this to discover what the Law of Conservation of Mass/Matter was.  This states that matter can neither be created or destroyed and the number of particles stays the same.  It also states that the mass of an object or substance will stay the same if nothing enters or leaves the system.  The next topic we discussed were physical and chemical changes.  A physical change is a change to an object that does not modify, or alter, its chemical makeup.  A chemical change is a change that provides new substances with changed chemical properties.  To help our understanding of these topics, we did another lab in which we did five different activities.  Each activity represented a physical or chemical change in which we needed to identify.

To cap off our first two weeks of classes, we learned about volume and how to measure it.  My group was given a regular shaped solid on which we marked five different heights on the side.  By measuring the height, width, and length of the solid, we calculated the volume of the container up to the various marks on the side.  After this, we filled water up to each mark and then dumped the water into a graduated cylinder.  This graduated cylinder measured how many milliliters of water was inside of the solid.  By finding both how many milliliters of water were in the solid, and what the volume of the solid was, we deduced that one centimeter cubed is equivalent to one milliliter.

I felt that the first two weeks of class went very well for me.  I learned the basics of chemistry which are going to be essential in learning and knowing more during the coming year.  I would rate my understanding of all of the topics we have discussed this year so far as very well.  I believe that part of the reason I understand everything so well is because we do many labs.  These labs give me a chance to see for myself how the topics we discuss actually work.  In addition, it is easier to stay engaged while doing an experiment in comparison to a teacher explaining notes.

Brad Bermke
P.S. I sent a video to your email since it wasn't uploading on here.  Thanks.