MOLES

This week we have learned about a special number called a MOLE! It is 6.02x10^23, found by Amadeo Avogadro. A mole is such a big number! From the powerpoint packet I know that it's not the mark on your face or Rufus, the naked mole rat, from Kim Possible. It is the scientist's one dozen. Using a mole you can find how many grams are in one mole by weighing one gram of something and then find the molar mass on the periodic table or if it's a molecule you have to add up all the molar masses of the atoms in the molecule and multiply it together. Then, to find how many atoms are in one mole, you multiply that by 6.02x10^23! A mole is a quite fascinating number...

Polar Bears and Penguins

This week we learned about polarity and corrected two worksheets on isomers, organic molecules, and Lewis dot structures. We worked on this comic which explained polarity and electonegativity using polar bears and penguins. Ice cream scoops represented electrons. A big block of ice was shaped like the periodic table with polar bears and penguins to represent the amount of electronegativity, so a big polar bear was in the top right corner because fluorine has the highest electronegativity and a small penguin was in the lower left corner to represent cesium, the element with the lowest electronegativity. We had to answer questions on a worksheet. The comic sort of helped me understand the concept more.

What Does That Smell Like?

Last week on Tuesday, in class, we did a lab. We had to smell vials of different compounds. Some smelled really sweet and nice, but some smelled REALLYREALLYREALLY bad, especially the ones at the end. We did the last few outside and at first I was confused at why we were going outside, but once the lid was opened I understood. I saw the bubble wrap and got excited and once it got lifted I jumped and didn't want to breathe. It was another interesting lab though =P