This Exciting Week: States of Matter+Fire=Awesome!

             This week in science class we learned about states of matter by doing oodles of fun experiments. First, we made slime by mixing glue with water and borax, a cleaning liquid. It was very fun, and i learned how to measure correctly AND how to basically knead in the food coloring into my slime. The slime was a colloid, which is a mix between a liquid and a solid. In this substance, the water molecules are held up by the borax and glue molecules, so it becomes a colloid. That was a chemical change because the molecules rearranged into a new compound. The experiment we did after that was carbon vs. candle. First, we lit a small candle and watched it burn. That was our control in our experiment. Next, we lit the big candle. Right after that we mixed some baking soda and vinegar together. I learned not to pour too much, because my group did and it overflowed right over the cup! (this could be bad if i am ever cooking or doing a more dangerous lab) We cleaned it up, then we did it correctly. We held up the cup full of baking soda and vinegar up to the candle- and the flame went out! This is because the baking soda and vinegar combine to make carbon dioxide. This is a chemical change, because the vinegar and baking soda combine to make a new substance, which is carbon dioxide. Fire needs oxygen, and when you put carbon dioxide up to the flame, it smothers the oxygen around it and causes it to extinguish. Now i understand how a fire extinguisher works! The third lab we did that week was roasting marshmallows. Yes, that sounds like something you do at a camp, not in a lab, but it has surprising science background. When i put my marshmallow up to the flame, the fire heated up the sugar in the marshmallows, causing it to caramelize, and then when it got even hotter, char. When i tasted the blackened part of the marshmallow, it tasted bitter and burnt, like charcoal. I did not like that taste. This taught me not to overcook food, or else it will taste like the burnt marshmellow. This is a chemical change called oxidation. This is when some pieces of the marshmallow burn up and are sent into the air. The blackened parts are in the process of burning. The last lab we did this week was burning pure sugar. We took a sugar cube and we crushed it, making that a physical change. It changed form but not its molecular structure. Next, we put sugar in water, and swirled it in. That is a physical change because if you evaporate the water, then the sugar would still be left. The sugar is still unchanged, it is just distributed around the water. Finally, we took a sugar cube, broke it up, placed it in a test tube and put it over the bunsen burner. It was quick to burn, and it made a black substance that looked an awful lot like tar. It immediately hardened. This is a chemical change because sugar is a substance made of carbon and water. When you burn it, the water evaporates leaving only the carbon behind. This helps me learn about sugar, and i can learn why and how it heats up. It also helps me learn how fire can change a substance.

Mixture Experiment

On Friday i did a mixture lab. This is how you separate a mixture.

1. Take out the plastic fly with the spoon.
2. Filter the water through the filter paper and put it in the big beaker. Put it on the bunson burner.
3. Now, spoon out all of the lima beans with the plastic spoon and put them on the tray.
4. Next, spoon out the toothpicks and put them on the tray.
5. Put the magnet in the cup with the sand in it and get all the magnets out!
6. Take the water off the bunson burner (hopefully it will be evaporated) and what is left is salt.

The 7 items are- lima beans, toothpicks, a plastic fly, water, sand, magnets, and salt!

Extra Credit

Over the break i read the book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. This book coincidentally has a lot to do with science. It is about a fierce conflict between science and religion. This book starts out stating a fact that a Swiss lab actually discovered a material called antimatter. Antimatter, as they explain later, is the exact opposite of matter, and when in contact with matter, destroys itself and the matter around it. I could not believe that such a material exists! The setting at the beginning is at the largest science lab in the world, called CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, which i researched and found that it is an actual place in real life. It is a lab for nuclear research, and in the book the characters use a few of the labs technology such as the Large Hadron Collider (which is the largest machine in the world), a reverse polarity vacuum, and a Boeing X-33. The second main character, Vittoria,  has a connection to science by being a Bio Entanglement Physicist, which means she studies how life systems interconnect, (especially aquatic species) and uses her knowledge in topics close to her work to help her throughout the book. In this book, characters are debating whether science or religion is correct, and if they can exist together. After reading the book I think that both religion and science exist in this world. Those are my thoughts on the book and how "Angels and Demons" connects to science.

Frog Dissection

               In science class, i heard that we were going to be dissecting frogs. I was pretty excited, because i had done this procedure in fourth grade and i remembered that it was fun. The next day, we got our frogs, and i learned that it was more complicated than i remembered. My group partner cut open the skin of our frog- and revealed hundreds of eggs inside. It took forever to get them all out- and it was pretty disgusting too. We still found eggs everywhere afterwards. We cut out the liver, and opened up the stomach. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the stomach. We cut that out since it was of no use. We viewed a few more organs before our class ended.
                The next science class we resumed our place. We got to see the heart, the small and large intestine, the gallbladder, the lungs, and more. We were about to open up the frogs mouth to see the tongue but class ended. I learned a lot about how our body works from this experiment. I saw how the systems fit together and the approximate size. I learned how the frog works and how it must live, and to respect every animal i come across. Overall, this experiment was fun, and i am looking forward to dissecting a starfish.

some helpful links-
http://www.biologyjunction.com/frog_dissection.htm


a reaaaaaally cool frog dissection game
http://www.surgery-games.org/43/Dissect-a-Frog.html
R.I.P Wendall

Digestion lab

Today, we did a lab in class, about digestion. We cut up some boiled eggs and put them into beakers. The first beaker we filled with 10ml of meat tenderizer. the second beaker we put 5ml of the same mixture. The third one we put 10ml of diluted hydrochloric acid in, and the last one we put 5ml of the same  diluted acid and 5ml of the meat tenderizer. Only the last one reacted to the eggs, it bubbled a little. We are waiting for tommorow to see the final results.

Chicken wing blog

On Thursday, October 20, 2011, my teacher dissected a chicken wing in front of the class. She took off the skin and then she pulled on the muscles of the chicken wing to flex and relax, and it moved! She then cut apart the bone to show the bone and cartilidge. She showed us all the kinds of the organ systems except the nerves. At the end of the dissection, most of the kids in my class couldn't eat chicken for the next day!

Diffusion lab

Today in my science class i did a lab on Diffusion and Osmosis. This experiment used cornstarch and iodine. We put cornstarch in a plastic bag and tied it, then put it in a mixture of iodine and water. We wanted to see if the bag was permeable, which means it lets some materials through. It let in only a little bit of iodine, however, and it turned the cornstarch light yellow, and light purple on the bottom where it was touching the bottom of the beaker. Ending result- not very effective.