Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Today's chemistry class was educational, yet different from day to day events. The large, red thing I have above this text is an illustration of a water molecule. H2O - the large hydrogen atom in the center, and the two oxygen atoms on the outside. But this isn't just any ordinary chem "mumbo jumbo"; we performed an exercise in class today based on molecules such as this one.

At the beginning of class, we completed the preliminaries. We discussed Shidan's blog entry, and Mr. Henderson stated we are to be doing a computer activity that day. Entering Room 339, we started immediately.

To begin our work, we proceeded to log on to our computers. Next, we all created ChemThink accounts like Mr. Henderson has shown us in the class. After this, we proceeded through an "atom tutorial". In this tutorial, we learned about certain terms. Included were: pure substance, solution, mixture, atom, molecule, element, and compound. These will be discussed in later paragraphs.

For example, a solution would be much like the water molecule above. It is a compound that fits together nice and smoothly. All the atoms blend into a common molecule. A mixture is different. A mixture contains many different particles, but they do not fuse together in one convenient molecule. Our own drinking water is filtered through the process of distillation; as many non-water particles get taken out as possible.

In the tutorial, we also learned the definition of atoms and molecules. An atom is the basic building block of matter. Everything in existence is composed of atoms. Every element on the periodic table is composed of a single type of atom. A molecule is a series of atoms bonded together. A molecule may be a compound, different elements together, or you could even have a molecule of the same element (a pure substance).

After passing the tutorial, the class took a small quiz on the content. It was necessary to pass the quiz by answering ten questions correctly without getting three wrong in a row. The students could have taken this quiz an unlimited amount of times.

The homework besides that was to complete pages 3-4 in our packet. It was basically a review of what we had studied earlier that day. We had to illustrate atoms and molecules based on their chemical formulas. The pages tested us on whether or not we could distinguish between a solution, a mixture, or a pure substance.

To summarize, our period 3 chemistry class had a productive day today. I personally found the activity very interactive and fun. I may now say I have learned at least something about atoms and their chemical properties.

Blog written by Dmitriy Kalin

Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons