Week 12 Reflection

Week 12 already! Its incredible how time flies in honors chemistry.  This week, our learning was focused on energy and how to represent it.  We started with Phase Diagrams.  To my surprise I understood them fairly quickly.  To me, they looked extremely complicated, but all I had to really do was break them down into pieces so they were not as bad. These diagrams are actually really helpful to our learning because we can find what phase a substance is in based on the pressure and temperature.  This helps us in a lot of ways because not only can we see the phase changes but we can see the gradual or more drastic the change is based on these factors.  I also like the new work book type sheets we use for skill practice because it's easy to look back on later and still understand.  This week we also practiced with specific heat. We also looked at heat capacity.  This is the amount of energy needed to change the temperature of  a substance one degree Celsius.  This led us to specific heat and Specific heat practice. Specific heat is the heat capacity for one gram of a substance.  Once you know the specific heat of a substance, you can find out how much energy it will take to heat any amount of it by multiplying the specific heat, temperature change, and mass.  We did practice sheets on these to check for understanding, and my group got every question right.  We really had a good grip on this concept it really is simple to understand once you look into it enough.  We had a very short assessment on the last day of the week.  It was only on four standards and based on the weeks studies I think I was able to apply the concepts I knew and do the very best I could have on this assessment. 

Week 11 reflection

This was a one day week in chemistry for me, but that one day actually meant a lot. We tested out our homemade thermos. At first it seemed like not much was going to happen, but eventually the temperature started to drop until we started to see a pattern forming. Every minute or so it would drop in increments of .5 degrees Celsius. This pattern stayed true for every measurement except for a few where the temperature stayed the same. This was really interesting to me and I'm anxious to see why this occurred on Monday.

Week 10 Reflection

I never ever understood that there was anything wrong with the word heat. This week proved me wrong. I now understand that heat is non existent, it is really just the presence of energy. I also now know that there is a lot that goes into the definition of temperature. It's also centered around the amount of energy. I also have been proven wrong in my belief that there are all these different "flavors" of energy. There's only one flavor, energy. It does not change forms, but is only stored differently. Energy and the idea of heat also went into our lab on Thursday. We used food coloring so we could see the differences in the stages of melting our water. We were also working on our project throughout the week which was making a thermos. This came with some guidelines which helped them all to be regulated. Ours took a while to make but turned out pretty well I think! (Picture below) this week was full of proving myths wrong and showing us how to rightly change out ideas about these topics.

Week 9 reflection

Week nine already! Time is flying in honors chem! This week was only a three day week for me but it was a short week full of new chemistry! We started the week by turning in and testing our home made barometers (pictured in action below). It was so cool to see how we could so simply make something that actually could be used to measure the weather! We later practice PTVn problems and I actually enjoyed them to some degree, it was cool to put our thoughts to numbers. Our assessment was Friday and I think I nailed some of the problems, but others, not so much. I hope I did okay but after studying up some more this weekend I think I'm ready to reassess if necessary! This week was very short but very substantial in Honors Chemistry!

Week 8 Reflection

At the start of this week, we learned how pressure relates to aspects like temperature, volume, and number of particles. They all became interconnected as we came to realize, and it helped us with the rest of the weeks activities. Wednesday was Halloween, we did an experiment with glow sticks. We tested to see how temperature effected the glow of the glow sticks and I learned a lot on how to preserve my glow stick! And a lot about how the particles in a glow stick move based in different temperatures. At the end of the week we started to learn about barometric pressure and weather and even discussed hurricane sandy. This weekends homework was to make a barometer with a partner and ours is pictures below, it really taught me a lot about how they work, and how pressure effected them!

week 7 reflection

This week we went further in our explorations of unit two. We learned more about pressure and learned how it relates to different forms of matter. We also learned about how thermometers work and it was interesting to figure it out! We also related pressure to force and area using experiments with surface area on a bed of nails. This experiment actually scared me because whenever I put the weight on Kelly's hand I was afraid I was going to hurt her, but this only helped give me a better understanding of the relation between force,pressure, and area. We also learned what temperature really means and how it relates to all of the weeks other lessons. Friday we did the standards as a class assessment and I think doing so will really help me on the assessment coming up this week! On a less academic note I learned Lexi has the best writing pen I have ever seen so unfortunately I must stop my blog post to go buy it, but before I go, the picture below is our results from a very informative lab we did. In this lab, we learned what would happen to pressure as temperature increased and the results we found were very interesting.

Week 6 Reflection

This week we officially ended our first unit in honors chemistry. It felt good to know how we could apply what we learned in that unit to this new one! We drew pictures representing all of the standards that we learned in unit one and it was interesting to see how each group depicted the ideas. After that, to start off the new unit, we watched a cartoon video explaining molecules, which I now know is Latin for little lumps, and how they move. I really enjoyed this video and it taught me in a way that I will remember the concept! I honesty hope we watch more like it. We also watched one explaining how a solid becomes a liquid due to heat and that helped me apply the idea to gases and order them from coolest to hottest material. We are still drawing great particle diagrams to represent what is happening at the lowest possible level. I was absent on Friday but I understand that we worked more with the new units concepts. Overall, this week has been an introduction to new ideas and I think I'm going to like unit two.

Week 5 Reflection

Monday and Tuesday started the planning for a long awaited lab involving water, two students, and a trash can. We all came to consensus fairly quickly about how to do the experiment, agreeing on the kiddy pool, trash can, filling water to the top, and water collection method. And then we came down to choosing who would be the subject of the experiment. Consensus was more difficult on this until a brave Shannon and Thomas agreed to be dunked. We finally were ready for the density of a student lab. Wednesday we finally did the lab. It had a few glitches, like water falling into the pool every time it was moved, but we were able to apply the conservation of mass and realize that nothing is actually leaving the system. After that it went off almost without a hitch. We had a group who put together a great PowerPoint that night and on Friday we all helped complete it. This week overall was a really good skill building week for all of us. We put together our own experiment as a class, completed it, found results, and made conclusions. I was really happy with the overall experiment and results. I've really learned a lot about how to try to perfect the process and result collection when creating an experiment.

Week 4 reflection

This week we learned how to use and understand ActiveGrade, this is useful to figure out how our grade is doing without a letter grade. We then did a lab to find the volume of candy. this taught us a new skill because you can't just use a formula to find the volume of an irregular object so water displacement is a good skill to learn. We had a sub on the third day of the week so we all helped each other to understand the lab and found the thickness of a paper sized sheet of aluminum foil. This helped us to figure out how to take control of the formulas we've learned to help in different situations. When we did the lab to find the density of a gas, my group had to complete it twice because our stopper fell into our flask instead of trapping the gas, this helped us realize we should always test our lab equipment before performing the experiment. The actual lab taught us another way to find the volume of an irregular object. The debriefing of these labs was helpful and I was able to find out the reasons for doing the labs and get the fullest learning out of them.

Week 3 Reflection

     From missing 2 Honors Chemistry classes last week and one this week, I felt somewhat discouraged and confused.  This confusion let me realize the value of all the technological connections we have in this class.  I didn't feel like I knew anything about density or the labs we were doing, but before our first assessment I was able to find notes right from the iPad used in class on Google drive and was able to catch up on tweets because of the ChemT3am hashtag.  I caught up in enough time to be sufficiently prepared for our first assessment.  
      This week we finally had a chance to discuss the grading scale that will be used in this class.  I love the idea of being graded on our understanding rather than a few assignments or quizzes that we may or may not have understood.  I understand that we will be rated on assessments rather than graded.  I am also happy to learn that assessments will be no more than 10 or 11 questions.  In other classes an overwhelming amount of questions throws off a grade but for these exams we will be judged on a concise understanding  check which is much easier to comprehend and complete.  I am also happy to know that I can reassess a standard if I would like.  I'm that person who lets nerves get the best of them on exams or when asked a question on the spot.  It is encouraging to hear that that is not my only chance to get a good grade but if I feel I preformed badly and can fix it, I have that opportunity.  Overall this week has taught me a lot about the working of Honors Chem which will help me get through a tough Junior year to come. 

Week 2 Reflection

This week in honors chemistry 7th hour we have really laid the basis for the rest of our year. We used measurements to find relationships between volume and mass. We carried out these ideas by presenting on whiteboards. Whiteboard activities are proving to be some of my favorite because I believe they are one of the most efficient ways to present and discuss this type of information. We are getting exposed to everyone's results, showing us where our results agree and where we could have gone wrong. This has been really helpful to start the first steps to chemistry and made me more confident in experimenting and finding results. This week has also helped me to figure out some things about chemistry that I never really thought about, such as particles or what is truly happening on the lowest level and really given me insight on these ideas.

Week One Reflection

     So far in Chemistry I have seen a new side of learning.   The teaching style in this class is seeming more like assisting or helping instead of ordering and instructing.  The activities have been thought provoking and interesting instead of the usual class instruction made to teach a certain topic.  This style has helped to give students an open mind and take a new approach to challenges and learning.  We've been taught that there may not be one right answer, but when you come to a consensus we can all be correct in some form.  There are steps to learning or grasping a concept but they all start with an open mind.  Learning and teaching take on a whole new meaning in this class.
     I have also started to discover the positive side of social media.  Instead of discouraging the use of social networking and electronics, we have learned the importance of all being connected with each other and with our world.  Social media like blogs and twitter have already benefited our learning experience in just one week of school.  We can all learn from not only the help of the teacher but from each other and thanks to the media we are being encouraged to take advantage of, we can do so freely and effectively. 
     We have also learned the importance of taking on whatever we are thrown.  The phrase "Challenge Accepted" is one we are all prompted to say whenever something is asked of us.  Even if something seems to difficult we should take the challenge and do what we can to make the best of it.  So far this class has been opening my eyes to a new kind of learning and bringing back my faith in school and teachers.  I feel that this year I will be able to effectively learn at my own pace and really understand instead of learning just for the sake of a test. Overall, this is a whole different genre of learning and teaching and we're in for an eye opening year.