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.