Last Meal Project

While completing my Last Meal Project, I referred to the charts below to help me. After converting the imperial unit to the metric measurement, I used dimensional analysis as explained a few posts back.

Last Meal Project Party

On Friday, we finished our week off with everyone bringing in one of their recipes from the Last Meal Project we had completed. It was nice to have an hour to relax and eat the food everyone brought in to share. The only downside was the majority of people brought in desserts, so you could not taste everything without getting sick. I think I only got to eat maybe a third of the projects brought in. Out of the ones I had the opportunity to try, they were very good, and I assume the rest were tasty too. I feel like the dishes that stood out the most were the ones that were not desserts. For example, I tried some pasta salad, sushi, and a couple different dips that I enjoyed very much. I am not saying that any of the desserts did not stand out, however. One of the desserts brought in were doughnuts that looked like monsters. They even had the plastic fangs in the middle! Also, the Reese's cupcakes with a peanut butter cup in the center and the Ande's Mint cupcakes were among my favorite desserts. It was nice to see all of the effort my fellow classmates put into their projects. The picture below shows two of the cupcake dishes brought in.

Test Grade Anticipation

On Thursday we took our unit test and I feel like I did somewhat well. A lot of the test was over the last section we learned, so it was still fresh in my mind. It was mostly just calculating numbers which I find easy. The most difficult part was remembering to round the answer to the correct number of significant figures, but the test was multiple choice, so I feel like I caught any mistakes I made while calculating. I was hoping the grade would be in now, but they are unfortunately not. This weekend was a busy weekend, so I expect them to be in this week because it should not be as hectic. I feel like I got a decent grade, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

Dimensional Analysis

Yesterday we learned about dimensional analysis. Dimensional analysis is used to convert one quantity into a different quantity. Below is an example:


 The quantity given was 10 m/s and they wanted to know what that quantity would be if it were converted into km/hr. Notice that the same units are placed diagonally from each other, so they cancel out each other when multiplied.

Using cubed and square unit is a similar process, just a little more complicated. For example, we are going to convert 56 in^3 to cm^3.

56 in^3 x (2.54cm/1in)^3 = 920 cm^3

Quiz Disappointments

Over the weekend, I reviewed the material in order to prepare for the quiz Monday. I was feeling pretty good and I feel like I had a decent understanding of what significant figures are, which was the hardest part of the unit so far for me. During the quiz, I felt like I knew what I was doing and felt like I would get an okay grade. When I checked the grade book, unfortunately, the grade was lower than I expected. At least it was a quiz and not the unit test, which is tomorrow, so the 5 points I missed should not tank my grade in the long run.

Significant Figures

The hardest lesson so far in this unit is significant figures. The definition of a significant figure is "each of the digits of a number that are used to express it to the required degree of accuracy, starting from the first nonzero digit". During the notes, I became very confused because there was a lot of information coming at once, so I did not have much time to process and understand it, but after looking at some different websites, I feel like I understand a little better. Below are some links that I feel like helped me understand what significant figures are and how to determine the number of significant figures in a number a little better.

• Websites:
• Significant Figure Rules
• Significant Figure Rules and How to do Math with Significant Figures
• Videos:
• Multiplying and Dividing with Significant Figures
• Adding and Subtracting Significant Figures

Quiz Yourself Here!

National Mole Day!

This past Friday was National Mole Day, so we had a party during class to celebrate. Since we all had a lot of room for creativity in our theme for our mole, they were all very different from each other. It was interesting to see how other people did completely different things even though we had the same instructions for our project. The connection with chemistry is that although a mole is an animal, it is also a type of measurement used in chemistry. It is expressed as 6.0221415 x 10^23. 

The history of Mole Day is explained here: Mole Day History