How to Make Silver for Pinkie Toe Rings

Today was our lucky day because we didn't have a quiz!! So be prepared to take one tomorrow or Monday.

In class today we got started on the Copper and Silver Nitrate Lab. We were to add 1.4-1.6 grams of silver nitrate crystals into a 50 mL beaker and record its mass. Then we were to fill the beaker with 3o mL of distilled water and stir it until the crystals dissolved. After the crystals dissolved, we were to coil a piece of copper wire around a pencil and then attach the coil to a wooden stick. The coil looked something like this...

Then we put the copper wire into the silver nitrate solution. Once the wire was in the solution, we put three drops of nitric acid into the beaker. We were to let the copper wire sit in the mixture for fifteen minutes and record our observations. The copper wire began to look grey and fuzzy. The liquid began to turn turquoise after about five minutes. The copper wire looked like this...

After fifteen minutes, we took the copper wire out of the mixture and held it over a 100 mL beaker. We held a steady stream of distilled water over it until all of the silver came off of the wire. Once the copper wire was clean, we rinsed it with acetone. Then we massed it and recorded the mass in our data tables. The copper wire was dull because it lost all of its shine. The rinsed copper wire looked like this...

Lastly, we decanted the water from the beaker into a waste flask so that most of the water was discarded. We rinsed the silver with distilled water and then poured the water out about five times. We have to let the solid dry overnight so we were not able to finish the lab today. So far, our beakers looked like this.....

And we will see what they look like tomorrow so we can finish the lab!

Hopefully we will gather enough silver for Ben T. to sell and Kaitlin S. and I can make a pinkie toe ring :)

The next scribe is Aaron G. Enjoy.

Pop Goes the Weasel!

Except sometimes it happens to be a mole. We started off class today with some stoichiometry notes and another one of Mr. Lieberman's crazy experiments. The goal of this one was to make a mole fly out of a tube that Mr. L constructed himself. We were all scared. We took CaC2 + 2H2O -> Ca(OH)2 + C2H2 and created a combustion reaction:
2C2H2 + 5O2-> 4CO2 + 2H2O
From this Mr. L asked us how many grams of H2O will form if .60 grams of CAC2 reacts. This is the formula we got:

We ended up with .17 grams of water. Now it was time to put this formula to the test. Mr. Lieberman loaded up his mole-rocket with the special ingredients from the formula. It was the combination of the CaC2 and H2O that created the Acetylene gas. This gas was the ignition that the rocket needed to make the mole fly. Suddenly there was a BOOM! A little red object shot across the room followed closely by a trail of fire. There were a few screams, particularly from Korri, which was expected. The room then filled with a smell that was immediately placeable: It was a mix of burnt hair and/or that smell from straightening your hair when it is still slightly damp.

Next, we all took our 4 question quiz. It was then graded and handed back. Hope everyone did well! And the next scribe issssss........Mollie M!

Intro Stoich Answers

The answers are posted here

BOOM!

Today we started off our class with Mr. Lieberman announcing that he had a demonstration for us. He filled up a can with methane gas (CH4) through a hole in the bottom and then lit it on fire through a hole in the top. We were told that the can would explode if his lovely assistant Colleen did her job right. Sadly, although Colleen did a wonderful job, Ethan was lacking in spirit and the explosion did not happen. So, Mr. Lieberman left the flame burning and continued on with his lesson.

Today's notes were on Stoichiometry. This unit combines our last two units of moles and chemical formulas and combines them. We can expect to have a quiz every day on what we learned the day before, unless Mr. Lieberman is feeling particularly generous that day.

Today's lesson, aka tomorrow's quiz topic, was about how to do the simplest kind of stoichiometric equation, in which a mole ratio is used to find out how many moles of one substance in a reaction is needed to form a certain number of moles of another substance in the reaction. To do this you must know the mole ratio of the two substances. This ratio is defined by the number of moles wanted/the number of moles given. To find these numbers, all you use is the coefficients from the molecular equation. The example we used in class was:

CH₄ + 2 O₂ → CO₂ + 2 H₂O

How many moles of methane are needed to make 13 moles of water?

To solve this you must multiply the desired 13 moles of H2O by the mole ratio of methane to water: 1 mole methane/2 moles water. The answer came out to be 6.5 moles of methane. These are the types of equations we had on our homework sheet and what we should expect to see on our quiz tomorrow...

BOOM!

I guess Ethan finally got a little faith...the paint can that most of us had forgotten about had exploded. The reason it took so long for the reaction to happen was because the can had to reach the proper ratio of methane to oxygen in order for anything to occur. Once it reached a ratio of 1 part methane for every 2 parts oxygen, it became a combustion reaction resulting in an explosion. (Sorry I didn't embed the video, I'm not great with technology.) Anyways, that was basically our day today, the homework was the sheet he gave us in class, the webassign if you have not already done it, and to be ready to take a quiz on mole ratio equations tomorrow.

ps. the next scribe is....Colleen C. Have fun!