Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Brady Loves Science!

This is a Chemistry assignment Brady, Amber and KyLynn did, complete with pictures.

A lot of the information is WAY over my head... so you may just want to look at the pictures - ha ha!
Methane Combustion Enthalpy Lab
They wanted to find how much energy was produced by the combustion of methane in KJ (kilojoules).
This is what they did: Method: (Part 1)


First, we set up a Terrill burner, a five gallon bucket almost of water, and a two liter bottle full of water. We then attempted to achieve a "perfect" flame with our burner.

Next, we noted the position of the gas valve at the "perfect" flame setting. We then turned off the flame and then submerged our burner, while still attached to the gas valve, in our five gallon bucket of water. We then carefully placed the mouth and part of the top of the two liter bottle of water in our five gallon bucket of water, making sure none of the water from the two liter bottle escaped.

Finally, we carefully positioned the burner under the mouth of the bottle, and turned on the gas valve so that it matched the position of the perfect flame. The methane from the burner then went into the bottle, pushing out the water, and we timed how long it took for the bottle to fill up completely with methane.
Method: (Part 2)


First, we set up a ring stand with a 600 ml beaker, with 500ml of water in it, and placed the Terrill burner underneath, so that the beaker is about 1 inch above the inner cone of the flame.

Next, we light the Terrill burner and set it underneath the beaker. When it is under the beaker, we start our timer. We then check the temperature of the water roughly every two minutes, then record its temperature along with the time it took to achieve that temperature.

We then got to 80 ͦ C, and recorded the time to get to that temperature.
Copper Plating Lab   Introduction: Wanted to copper coat a piece of metal

Method: 1. Clean the metal  • Physically cleaned metal with water and steel wool
Put into sulfuric acid/water mix (H20 + H2S04) -- Chemical Clean 1
• Put into Hydrochloric Acid solution (HCl) -- Chemical Clean 2 • Rinsed in water

2. Coating the metal • Put nail polish on parts we didn't want copper to coat to
• Attached metal to a rod attached to a magnet (pumping electrons in) with copper wire
• Dropped attached metal in copper sulfate solution
• Waited 30-60 seconds before removing the metal • Rinsed it in water • Buffed the metal with quick light strokes
• Repeated process about 6 times through • Lastly, buff the metal with several quick light strokes until shiny
• Remove the nail polish (done at home or on own time)

Conclusion: (Brady's was the quarter above)

I wish that we had brought our own nail polish, since there were only two bottles in the whole class, I felt rushed, and did a poor job. I also buffed my quarter a little to hard on the final buff, and ended up removing a small portion of the end result that should have stayed on. If I had to do it again, I would have been more precise when painting the quarter and buffed it more gently.
The teacher set the table on fire... What a Crazy Fun teacher. Now that is a way to get the attention of your students! Brady loves Science!

I am thankful that I am a Mom! I love watching Brady be excited about school, science and getting a good education!

5 comments:

Zoey said...

That is an awesome picture of the table set on fire. Just can't believe it!

Ann Marie said...

It's so good that he loves it!
I was one of those "stand far away and watch" science girls. I let the other kids disect and experiment...

CB said...

Love that the teacher set the table on fire!! Definately makes any class more fun (wink!).

Valerie said...

I love science and love to see kids who love it! Great photo of fire. I had an AP chem teacher in high school make a mistake with some chemicals and while there was no fire, there was lots of smoke and that part of the school had to be evacuated. No cool like the table on fire.

Unknown said...

I hope "Brady" knows that she blogs about him ALL THE TIME.

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