Magnesium Oxide

wow i haven't blogged in few weeks! sorry! anyways, today we did this lab with magnesium oxide and it was pretty cool because we got to see real sparks fly and gas being burned and all that cool stuff. We had carefully measured out a specific amount of magnesium and put it into the bottom of a crucible. then we lit a flame and turned on the gas and cooked it until the magnesium oxidized. The way to check was to lift the lid of the crucible and if there was smoke coming out or the magnesium was brightly lit then that meant it wasn't done cooking. It was cool to see how bright the magnesium got just being exposed to the air for a few seconds. I think that was just the best part: seeing the reaction of the magnesium and the oxygen was cool enough :)

Chemistry! :]

So this week we did a lot of interesting labs involving bases and acids and trying to figure out the pH level of a certain solution. It was cool to see how ROY G. BIV applied to determining of what the pH was. Basically if the solution turned into any colors from red to yellow, it is an acid (pH 0-6). Colors green to purple meant the solution is basic (pH 8-14). Yellow usually is a neutral color, which means the pH level of that solution is 7. We also learned with litmus paper, if it was blue to red, its an acid, but if the color goes from red to blue, its a base-a-roo. ahhh! we have a test tomorrow!! The material is so confusing and i dont really understand the ionization stuff :[ I have to study tonight!!!

Like Dissolves Like

Dissolving means to mix two substances it together to create one solution. The solute combines with the solvent so the two substances become one (i.e. sugar and water)
There is a rule that goes along with this, and that is "like dissolves like":
"Like dissolves like" means that a solvent dissolves a solute with the same polarity; therefore a polar solvent will only dissolve with a polar solute and a non polar solvent will only dissolve with a non polar solute. In the example on the left, the oil and water do not dissolve because water is polar, but oil is non polar, therefore they will eventually separate even if you try and mix them.

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.