Conductivit lab

This week we did some experiments about ions.
We made 8 different solutions that you can see in the following picture.

 

We take a battery and a small light so we can see whether or not the solutions conduct current. 

The solutions are put in small glasses.

How you can see on the picture above all of the solutions conduct current. 

Some solutions conduct less current than others because if an atom is solved in water it can give or gain more easily electrons than if it is solid. Like NatriumChlorid Natrium it gives an electron because it has only one electron on the outer space and Chlorid gains one electron because in has seven on the outer space. Basically you can say that all the atoms that have 3 or less electrons on the outer space give their electrons in order to have a filled outer space and all the atoms that have 5 and more gain electrons until their outer space is filled. However, if an atom needs to give or gain 3 electrons it is kind of hard because the electron still wants to own the third electron and the other atom wants to get the electron. So both electrons "pull" that electron and then you have a positive or a negative charge. If an atom has 4 electrons on the outer space it it very hard to gain or give all the electrons because then there is a positive or negative charge, too. 

For me the unit about ions will not be very hard because that was one of the first things we've learned in Germany. In Germany we are still working with ions so i don't have problems with it, also because it is one of the most important themes in chemistry I think.

The next step you could do to improve your knowing about ions is to make some compounds (theoretically) and write down which atom gains electrons and which atom gives electrons. Then you should also write down if the atom is charged positively or negatively.

By Andre Simons

Light Spectra

This week we learned what light is.
Light is formed out of the energy from an electron.
You get this energy when an electron of one atom changes its energy levels by jumping from one level to the other and then back. During this process the electron contains energy which it absorbs when it goes back to its original level. This energy is called a "photon". A photon is light.
The main character of light is its wavelength. Because the energy that the electron transports differs we can see different colors.
This is why a shorter wavelength is a darker color and a higher wavelength is a lighter color. Ultraviolet which has much more energy than for instance infra red. This is why it is dangerous to go to a tanning bed. Because ultraviolet has a lot of energy is can enter your cell nucleus and cause cancer.
The frequency of the wavelength is also important The frequency says how fast the amplitude of one wave is. The unit of the frequency is Hertz. It is defined as: Times of oscillation divided by the time it takes.
On the following picture you can see some of the colors we can see. We took different elements (gases) and looked through a spectroscope and then we saw the following colors:

I learned this week that you can separate the colors we see by watching through a spectroscope and i learned that the amplitude and the wavelength is an important role in light. Some things I have learned in Germany, too.
I liked the experiments we made a lot because they were fun and it is kind of exciting what gases are made up of.
By Andre Simons

Separation Techniques

We made also another experiment. We took sand, marble hips and some iron. In order to separate iron we need a magnet and a small bag. Then we put the magnet into the bag and go over these chemicals. You can see that iron is magnetic and it is seperated from the two other chemicals.
We separate the sand from the marble chips by using a filter screen. Then we have all three chemicals separated which we mixed at the beginning of the experiment.

Chemistry Separation Techniques

Chromotorgaphy
We take some pens (red, green, black, ...) and draw on a filter paper. Then we fill some water in a petrie dash. After that we make a small hole in the filter paper and put an other small paper through the hole. Then we can see that for instance red is made out of more than one color.