Baby Bottle Lab

The other day, I joined my peers in one of the strangest labs I have encountered. We used baking soda, and vinegar mixed together in careful calculations to determine a number of moles that would give the baby bottles enough thrust to propel them through a six-meter gutter filled with water, in order to calculate the amount of moles of CO2 produced by the baking soda and the vinegar.  I succeeded one time in all my efforts to get the bottle to span the length of the gutter.  I was often confused by why my bottle would not go nearly as far as anyone elses when used with the same amounts of vinegar and baking soda, and if I were ever to do it again, I would probably just find a different bottle to use that would hopefully give me better results.  One of the questions I'm supposed to answer in this blog was "Why are limiting reactants determined by stoichiometric amounts?"  Unfortunately the only way I feel that I can answer this question, in all honesty, is that I don't believe that "stoichiometry" is a real word, and I hope that I won't get docked points for saying that.

The Mole; In All It's Glory (or so I'm told)

If I am remembering correctly, I started this semester in January, on the third; on a Tuesday (had to look at a calendar for that one).  On that day, I came into my chemistry class, first thing in the morning, thinking, "Oh, joy, another science class that I am barely going to skim by to pass.  Who knows, maybe this class will prove to be something in my strong suite."  /me; chuckles.*   What a fool I was.

Just to get this out there, I don't really know why I'm in honors science classes, nor do I know how exactly I got there.  I probably should have been in regular classes to start with, which probably would have kept me from bombing them with such. . . vigor. 

In any aspect; to get to the main point of this blog: the mole.  The mole, from what I'm told, is no longer a pestilential mammal which waits for you outside your humble abode until you turn off the game without saving, and once you return, sweat perspiring ever so vigorously from your brow, pesters you relentlessly to spell his name correctly.  (Thank you for the chuckles, fans of Animal Crossing).  The mole is an enormous number used by scientists to calculate a specific number of molecules of an element in a compound or solution, etc. If I understand the mole concept correctly, calculating a number of moles is fairly simple, it's just the atomic number of an element in grams.  This is then used in a number of ways to determine how much of said element is produced by a reaction, how to calculate an empirical formula to find the molecular formula, and so on, and so on. . . It's a downer I have no idea how to use it find any of those things. . .


*=/me is the command used in Steam chats to indicate the action of a person.

Book? What book...?

In my time being enrolled in Honors Chemistry, since nearly the start of the class, we have been assigned to read a book.  But not any specific book, nor could we just read any old book.  We had to read something based off of science or on the history of science.  I, personally, chose to read The Alchemy of Air.  Mostly because I knew someone that had taken this class before and that is what he had chosen to read, and I figured it would be an interesting read.  Unfortunately enough for me, since my mind is only really intrigued by the more fanatical and classical sides of literature, it easily became very hard for me to wrap my head around ever even getting to this book.  Having two honors courses and trig on top of all of that doesn't really help with the matter that it's hard for me to even pick it up in the first place. . .

I find it really rather drab, if you will, merely because there doesn't seem to be a true storyline behind it.  Just facts of things that had happened and what some guy had done behind his closed scientist doors in order to keep the world from starving and, better yet, fatten it up.  I hate to admit it, (especially because my teacher will be reading this, but) I have barely gotten through the first few chapters.  Like I said, it's hard for me to pick up, for me, almost entirely because of the fact that it isn't all that interesting.  Any spare time I used to devote to reading is now occupied by time devoted to keeping my arse out of the gutters of the grade books.

Hopefully in the upcoming spring break I will be able to make up for all that lost reading. . . To conclude this message;  I don't find The Alchemy of Air as interesting as I had once had hopes for it to be.

Today I read a blog about neutrino physics.  All I could really tell from what I could understand of all the complex words and numbers were that somehow some type of particle was either shot faster than the speed of light, or the people doing the experiment weren't paying enough attention to what they were doing. 

Old and New Materials

Today I watched a rather interesting video on silk and the way in which scientists can reverse engineer silk and reuse it as several different types of items.  This video was titled, "Old and New Materials."  I found that it was very intriguing, especially because I had never heard of one single material able to be applied in so many different ways and still be biodegradable.  We've all seen the way that plastic can be used, and reused and applied in so many different ways as a substitute for metal, like on cars, or glass, like with cups, but they're not so friendly with the environment or our bodies.  This new way of using silk, however, is perfectly eco friendly and can be used completely safely in our bodies.  I don't know about you, but I thought this was pretty neat.  One of the things about it that especially caught my attention, was ability to use it to implant an l.e.d. tattoo.  Now, if that meant what I think that means (glow in the dark tattoos -...-), then there could be some serious applications for a very intriguing art form emerging.  I can just see it now; comicon, 2015, people showing up painted blue, with pointy ears and shiny new tattoos on their bodies, illuminating the room.  Ah, the satisfaction of having a nerdy point of view.