THE MOLE SONG!!!!!!!!

BTW: we watched the mole song this week. A mole is 6.02 x 10²³. It was pretty cool because the number is so big...a mole of stacked up paper can go up to the moon and back 80 billion times!!! That's A LOT! however, you can hold a mole of atoms just in your hand. It's pretty amazing :) We also learned how to convert grams of an element into g/mol and back again. It's pretty confusing at first but using the conversion factor song, you get the hang of it after a while. yup, that's it for now :D

FINALSSSSS!

FINALS ARE NEXT WEEK!!! EEEKKK! :O I'm so nervous about finals because it can really determine what my grade is this final semester because almost all my grades are boarder line....for chemistry, I'm going to have to do all the review games and study the review sheet. I think this is so helpful though because it really covers all the material we've learned and will most definitely help me review. Thanks goodness we can have a toolkit for algebra 3! for history, we can use flashcards, but I'm not sure how much that's going to help much. Spanish is the one class that doesn't really have a set study guide. We have a list of topics to review, but no official study guide yet. I wish all the classes would give out study guides. That would help so much! And for english, I don't even know what our final is going to be! >.< o well, I'll tell you what happens next week. (o for P.E. we had our tumbling final and I got a 35 out of 35 :) the teacher said our group was the best out of all his classes! yay! it made my day :P )

Sweet Sixteen!

It's my birthday Saturday and that's also our first basketball game against Lincoln high school :) This week I guess I'm really excited, I find myself thinking it's Monday when it's tuesday and thinking it's Thursday when it's Wednesday. Maybe it's because my birthday is coming up. Surprisingly, I'm not even doing anything special even though I'm turning 16. Just dinner, maybe. On Sunday I am going to a birthday party but not for my birthday, but I still can't wait, because all my friends are going to be there, and it should be a lot of fun :) I really hope we win saturday, that would just be an added happiness to my already happy day i guess. There's actually a lot of people's birthdays around mine. I know people with birthdays on Dec, 2, 4-8.

Anyways, on Friday we have a big chem test on molecules and polarity and all that stuff. There are some things that are really easy, but others I just don't get it. Hopefully I don't do so bad on this test so it will raise my grade right before finals week...because I really want to do well this semester. I want to have at least 6 A's and 1 B. hopefully :)

Thanksgiving!!!!

Thanksgiving break just passed and it was oh, so relaxing. Black Friday was so much funn!!! I went to Tanfran in the morning with my friend and we watched New Moon. Some people thought it was really bad and others really good; I kept getting mixed reviews but after it was over, I generally liked it much better than Twilight. Then after that, I met up with two other friends and we just walked around and hung out. It was one of those days I wish could keep going on and on forever. On Thanksgiving day, I was able to sleep in for a little bit and then I made chinese cup cakes for dinner that night. :) Then we went over to my grandma on my dad's side, spent some time with her, and then went to old navy for a short shopping trip. We didn't end up getting anything and as we went over to my mom's side of the family for dinner, I fell asleep and took a nice nap for two hours :P Afterwards, we went upstairs and hung out with the family. We had prime rib for dinner and then for dessert, my dad made his yummy cheesecake jello with a macadamia nut crust. It was soooooooo good!!!! We ended up playing a family game of cranium and my cousin and I were on a roll!! She drew while I was able to guess almost immediately what she was drawing. We ended up winning :D It was a great ending to a great day.

Lewis Dot Strucures!

This week we began to learn about Lewis Dot Structures. It was really a neat way to draw out and visualize how the various atoms connected and shared their valence electrons. In the beginning I guess it took a while to catch on but once i fully understood it, it seemed so easy. and simple. I began to see how some of the things we've been learning come together, like how each group had a certain number of valence electrons and the different bonds atoms form, like covalent bonds, versus ionic or metallic bonds. It was fun making the structures too, trying to figure out how to fit the atoms all together with various bonds, double bonds, or even triple bonds. We also learned about HONC1234 which I thought was a really cool way to remember which families have a certain amount of valence electrons. It's been really fun this week , which is a little surprising because I don't especially like chemistry too much but it was a nice change for once.

Two Saturdays?

Wednesday was Veterans Day so we had a break in the middle of the week. It felt like a Saturday on Wednesday because I stayed home all day and slept in and just relaxed. The Tuesday before felt so much like a Friday too because I was able to stay up pretty late even though I felt really tired. Then Thursday felt like a Monday! I was so tired and wishing for the week to end and it felt like it just started. It was like my whole sense of time got messed up. This morning, it felt like we were still in the middle of the week but it's starting to feel like a Friday again as the day is winding downAlso basketball season started and all the returning sophomores made the team and four freshmen were added this year. BUT we have FOUR team managers! this will be an interesting season....

Light, Ions, and Bond types

So we've been using Google docs to do a lot of graphing and I've come to realize that it is a really cool application I've never really noticed or used before. It's pretty helpful in making graphs and analyzing data. This week we've also learned a lot about ionic compounds and different bond types. We learned that ionic bonds are formed between metal and non-metals, covalent bonds are formed between non-metals, metallic compounds are created with metals, and molecular covalent bonds are formed through non-metals. There's plenty to lean about these things and they can be really confusing at first. We have a test tomorrow too and I don't know if I'm ready D: well, hopefully the various games posted on schoolloop will help...

Basketball tryouts :)

Basketball tryouts are this week!!!!! starting Saturday at 3:30, I realize I need to go running or something because I haven't exercised in three weeks! Plus my mile time is getting worse :( There's a lot of good freshmen this year, hopefully I'll do well right? You know that satisfying feeling of the swoosh of the net, I need to start hearing those again which will give me a signal I am getting better. I don't want to make a fool out of myself! haha, there's gonna be two more after saturday so hopefully since I was on the team last year, i'll get my spot :D I'm excited too because there's going to be some new people trying out so it should be fun.

Flame Test Lab

PRETTY COLORS!!!!!! the lab was really cool because we fist dipped a thin steel wand in a chemical and as we put it in the fire, the fire changed color. Depending on the chemical, that determined the color of the temporary flame, ranging from red to green. It was really cool just to watch the flickering flames changing from the normal blue flame to green to yellow to orange. We talked about the different waves in class like light waves, microwaves, and infrared waves and how we can see some waves but most of them we cant.

A Little Detour to Medieval Knights

hey, so taking a little break from chemistry now. let's see...life...haha, life is really good right now. Mostly stressing over the english arthurian project because my topic is really specific: talking about a knight's daily life. I guess I could've chosen something with more information, but I really wanted to know what knights do everyday. It's not as much info as I wanted but I'll try to make my presentaion longer...and my essay was only 2 1/2 pgs in stead of 3! >.< i hope i do well tomorrow....

Einstein's Big idea

We watched the movie of Einstein's Big Idea. It was about the discovery of the famous equation: E=mc2. It broke down each symbol and gave a background of how each (E=energy, m=matter, and c=the speed of light) and the important people in discovering each symbol necessary for the equation. It was really informative as well as entertaining because besides just saying the information, it was almost like a movie with commentary which held us in interested attention all the while learning at the same time. This movie really helps to understand this classic equation which many people know of, but do not fully comprehend. It's a nice break from all the chem labs we do in class but it was very educational and fun and definitely captured even the most uninterested student's attention. :)

Hot or Cold?

DRY ICE!!!! It's so cold that it burns when you hold it for any length of time. We put it in soppy water and bubbles just started erupting, almost like a volcano except the lava was the bubbles. Once the bubbles popped it didn't become liquid, but dispersed into that white mist you sometimes see during a rock band concert. Then we put the dry ice into a tank and blew bubbles over it. As the bubbles floated down, right before it reached the bottom, it floated up in mid air, kind of bounced up and down and then just hung there, floating in the air, not moving up or down. It was so cool! :) Another thing we did was put the dry ice in a big basin filled with water and liquid soap. We used a cloth and ran it on top of the bowl like a cover and a big bubble that covered the entire opening of the container was formed. The gas from the ic began to expand the soap buble and the buble began to creep over the sides of the basin so that it looked like a giant mushroom or domw. Then it popped and all of a sudden theres was all this mist in the air and a whole bunch of laughter. ^_^

Powers of Ten

I suggest everyone watch the powers of ten video because it's so cool! :P it goes from a picture of a man on a picnic and every ten seconds, the window expands all the way up to the 10 to the power of 26. At this point, we are way past our own milky way and into the universe where you can see other galaxies that look like tiny far away starts. Then we zoom all the way into the 10th to the -16th power. We get all the way into the nucleus of an atom that is one of billions that make up our body's DNA. We also watched the Simpson version too and that was pretty cool because they showed the aliens :)

The Periodic Table

The periodic table. It's looks intimidating at first, but once you get to know its properties and the way it is put together. Trying to put together our own periodic table really helped me o understand it better and also understand where each element is placed and why. In some places there were elements that dont seem to belong there and I wonder why it was put there. I think the organization of the table is great though because reading left to right, the atomic mass increases, and top to bottom, the number of spokes, or varseles, increase. Working on the Periodic table has somewhat allowed me to grasp the concept of the elements better, and hopefully as the year goes on, I can improve even more.

Elements and Compounds Lab

Playing with first is always fun, but it was even cooler when we put the steel wool in the flame of the candle. Sparks flew and at the end, there were silverish blue balls that had formed on the steel wool.

to be continued...

Whatsa Matter?

Whatsa Matter? or, what is matter? Matter, by definition should be something that take up space and had mass. But sometimes it can be pretty unclear what it really is. electricity? heat? It might take you a little more time to think about it. The Measurement in Chemistry lab was also pretty fun. we had to compare objects and guess their volume and mass. It was pretty funny because sometimes my guesses were really close, like 2-3% away and other times it was 50% error. It was fun though because I was able to work with s fun table group and it was also interesting just to learn how to use the scale and it was cool to see just how exact you can be; up to the hundredth digit. Now, I also learned to calculate my percent error which was also interesting to learn.

Copper into Gold?

In Chemistry the other day, we did a penny lab where we turned the penny into gold. Not real gold of course but It was still cool to watch the penny change from copper to silver to gold. We first soaked the penny in heated zinc, which coated the penny, so that when we took it out it was silver color. Then, we were able to place the penny into fire and after 10-20 seconds or so the penny turned the color gold. I thought this was very interesting because I've never done something like this before. Even though the penny was the color gold, I dont think I created real gold because real gold melts or bends in fire. However, if I kept the penny in long enough it would begin to crumble. Even though I didn't creat real gold, it was still facinating to watch and examine.

Goals and Passions

My goals...what are my goals...goals for highschool, goals for life. One of my goals is to graduate high school and get into a four year U.C. I want to get a P.H.D in whatever I'm majoring in. I want to become either a teacher or a doctor. I want to excell in whatever I do and make as many people as I can happy :) Also somtime in the near future I would like to go to Hawaii, just because I've never been there before. Something over the course of high school i want to improve is my public speaking and problem sloving in math, and hopefully chem will help me with that.