Finally Made it into Lab!

So today, my partner and I both passed the pre-lab quiz for the first time all year. This means we got to complete our first lab! As for our class overall, there were four total lab partnerships that passed. That is quadruple our original record. The lab was about figuring how to find the formula of a chloride. We did this by measuring the mass of the empty beaker, the beaker with the piece of zinc, and the beaker with the zinc chloride compound. The first picture shows the piece of zinc in the HCl in the early stages of heating, so the zinc has not dissolved much yet. The second picture shows the end product after heating the zinc and HCl. The third picture shows my calculations to how I determined the formula of the chloride.

Well That Was Rough...

Yesterday we took our first quiz for this unit, and it was rough. During the quiz, I could tell that I was forgetting to look for a lot of things, such as the diatomics, so I was not expecting to get a good score.  Quiz grades were entered in the gradebook this morning and I was not surprised. On the brightside, it was only 17 questions, so it did not completely cause my grade to plummet, but that means that with few questions, each missed question dramatically affected the quiz score. Hopefully the unit test next week will go better, I just need to review. Below are some helpful links.

The Seven Diatomics

Different Diatomic Acronyms

Solving Problems Using Moles

Yesterday in class we learned how to solve problems using moles as a unit of measurement. Basically, this lesson was an exapansion on dimensional analysis, a skill which we learned last unit. The picture below serves as a guidance to find the right answer when converting between grams, moles, representative particles, and/or the volume of gasses.

Pretest

Today we took the prestest for our new unit. While taking the test, I barely knew any of the material. Usually during pretests, I can gather a vague idea of what is going on, but this time I could not figure out almost anything. My score of a 31% reflects these thoughts of unfamiliarity with this unit's content. It looks like the unit is a lot of calculating numbers, which is fairly easy, so I hope this unit is not that hard.

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.