Lab 8: Electron Configuration Battleship Lab

Lab 8: Electron Configuration Battleship Lab

The hardest part about this activity was using the orbital configurations to name the elements we were trying to hit. This aspect of the game caused me to think about the names more, and gave me good practice on how to navigate the periodic table with orbital configurations. The repetitive nature of the game made me learn how to quickly identify the elements from their orbital configuration names.

Lab 6: Mole-Mass Relationship Lab

Lab 6: Mole-Mass Relationship Lab

The purpose of this experiment was to teach students the concept of stoichiometry. Stoichiometry is the process of using the chemical equation to calculate the relative masses of reactants and products involved in a reaction. This gives students an idea of what they should expect from reactions.

Data:

If you take a look at problem 4 you will see that the percentage is above 100. This unusual phenomenon can be attributed to the changed shape of the evaporation dishes. We had to change to glass beakers because the aluminum in the evaporation dish was reacting with the acid. The beaker was more narrow than the evaporating dish so the water condensed on the side and added mass because it did not fully evaporate.

Lab 5B: Composition of a Copper Sulfate Hydrate Lab

Lab 5A: Composition of a Copper Sulfate Hydrate Lab

Hydrate prior to heating it.

Hydrate after applying heat.

Calculations:

1. Mass of the hydrate used- mass of the evaporating dish (1.35g) subtracted from the mass of the evaporating dish and hydrate(2.25g) equaled to 0.900 grams.

2. Mass of the water lost- mass of evaporating dish and hydrate(2.25g) minus the mass of the evaporating dish and anhydrous salt(1.72g) equaled to 0.530 grams.

3. Percentage of water in the hydrate- divide mass of water lost (.530g) by the mass of hydrate used (.900g) to get 59%.

4. Percent error- |59-36|/36 *100 equals 38.9 percent error.

5. Moles of water evaporated was 2.94*10^-2. Moles of anhydrate that remained in the dish was 2.32*10^-5. Ratio of moles of CuSO4 to H2O was 13:1.

Empirical Formula: 1CuSO4 • 13H2O. The coefficient of the water molecule is not correct as indicated by the high percent error. Ours is much higher that it should be, and my estimate is that the real coefficient is around 5. We attribute the error to fluctuations on the scale while our team was measuring mass.

Lab 5A: Mole Baggie Lab

Lab 5A: Mole Baggie Lab

The purpose of this experiment was to apply our newly gained knowledge of moles and Avogadro's number, 6.02*10^23 to identify the substance that was inside a paper bag.

Our team was given a plastic bag with an unknown substance within it. The bag contained information regarding the number of representative particles it had in it. The bag was labeled B2 and it had 3.10*10^22 molecules inside of it. It also had the mass of the bag. The first step was to weigh the substance along with the bag and subtract their masses to determine the mass of the mysterious substance. The next thing our group did was to determine the number of moles in the substance, because this would be important later on. To find the number of moles we divided the number of molecules by Avogadro's number and we found there were .0515 moles of the substance in the bag. Next, we calculated the molar mass by dividing the number of grams of the substance by the number of moles. Finally, we compared the molar mass of the unknown substance to that of many other substances that were given to us and we determined that the mysterious substance was sodium chloride. Coincidentally, the other bag A1 also contained sodium chloride so we immediately were able to identify it based on its molar mass.

Lab 4A: Double Replacement Reaction Lab

LaB 4A: Double Replacement Reaction Lab

Well Plate with many chemicals: chemicals 1-4 are chemicals reacting with  zinc sulfate, chemicals 5-7 are chemicals reacting with copper sulfate, chemicals 8-9 are chemicals reacting with sodium phosphate, and chemical 10 is a chemical reacting with sodium carbonate.

The various chemical equations that took place in the reactions. The picture below shows the net ionic equations that took place in reactions 2-7. No reaction took place in 1,8,9 and 10.

Well, thats forty-five minutes of my life I can never get back...

This lab, in theory, was supposed to be relatively simple and straight forward. It consisted of mixing chemicals together and recording the reaction, and calculating the reaction's equations. However, the equations of the reactions proved to be quite challenging for me, and I easily became frustrated when it took longer than ten minutes. Something that surprised me during this lab was how difficult it was to tell if a reaction had taken place in some of the chemicals. Only after waiting for a few minutes was my group able to tell that a reaction had taken place at all. 

Lab 3: Nomenclature Puzzle

Lab 3: Nomenclature Puzzle

The primary goal of the nomenclature puzzle was to piece together a square puzzle with many formulas of the different types of compounds. The puzzle had formulas written on each side of the puzzle piece and the goal was to math the puzzle pieces with their corresponding parts. For example Oxygen dichloride would match with the formula OCl2. One of the biggest challenges while working on this puzzling puzzle was not accepting that we had made a mistake , because we were confident with our answer. This caused our team to lose time but it was only a minor setback. Another challenge was recalling the rules for some of the more complex formulas. My biggest contribution to the team was previous knowledge about elemental symbols and the division of labor in our group, one person would make the puzzle and check the formulas and the other two people would find the correct pieces, which resulted in the puzzle being completed very quickly.

Lab 2B: Atomic Mass of Candiu

Lab 2B: Atomic Mass of Candium

The purpose of the Atomic Mass of Candium Lab was to practice calculating atomic mass using the percentage of how abundant the isotope is. In the lab, we were given three different isotopes of the element cadmium: regular, pretzel, and peanut. We measured the mass of each type of isotope and counted the the amount of each type of the isotopes. Next, we determined the average mass of each isotope by dividing the total mass of the isotope by the number of each type of isotope. When we had the average mass of the isotopes we had to determine the abundance of each type. To do this, we counted all the samples of candium and used the number of isotopes to find the percentage. Then we used the formula below to calculate the average atomic mass; the average atomic mass of candium is 1.356 amu.

Question 1: The differences between the average atomic masses between groups is a result of the small sample size. Because of the small sample size, outlier data had a greater affect on the data, something which would not cause a problem if the sample size was large.

Question 2: The differences between the groups average atomic masses would be smaller if given a larger sample size, because outlying data would not have such a drastic effect on the results. For example, when scientists took the average atomic mass of elements they used a very large sample size and compared it to every form of the element on Earth.

The different isotopes of candium.

Question 3: No, because the average atomic mass is calculated after recording many samples of candium, so it would not have the same mass.

The element Candium on the periodic table.