Redox

(Yes I realize this is 2 posts the same day but I feel I gave a reasonable argument as to why in my last blog posts here)

So I was absent during this lesson so I'm going off of my neighbors notes and what the internet tells me so I may not be exactly correct. These videos really helped, and the redox reaction wiki page helped too.

Redox is a fancy name for an oxidation reduction reaction, and that's a fancy way of saying an atom is loosing electrons and another is gaining electrons. The anion is being reduced and is gaining an electron, and the cation is loosing an electron and being is oxidized. LEO says GER, Loosing Electron Oxidized, Gaining Electron Reduction. There is synthesis where 2 atoms come together, single replacement where the metal is replaced, decomposition where a compound is split, and combustion is when a hydrocarbon reacts with oxygen gas the products are ALWAYS H2O and CO2. In order for the reaction to occur the charge on the ones that will replace each other must be equal.

Finally Back! (Lab)

I haven't made a blog post in so long! The reason I haven't is because I was sick Tuesday the 24th the last day of school before the long break. That made me miss the redox lesson which you can see my blog post on that here. Anyways I got better on thanksgiving but my computer decided to completely break to the point where I couldn't even turn it on, so no blog post Thursday. Then I went out on Friday and get a great deal on a laptop so thats what I'm making this blog post on. Now to the actual educational part of this blog, we did a double replacement lab in class awhile ago and it was really cool. In the lab we would take 5 drops of one solution then add 5 more drops of another solution and we would observe if a solid was formed. Below are a few pictures I took during the lab and thats all i have for this post!

First Lesson

So we had our first lesson of this unit yesterday it was pretty basic, just balancing chemical equations which is just making sure you don't get numbers messed up. I'm writing this on my phone right now so I'll add links and a picture once I get home on my computer. This unit it seems like we won't be doing as complicated numbers as the last unit, so I'm ecstatic about that.
Links! (Kinda forgot about them.)
Balanced Equation Calculator
Video Explanation

RIP

So we took the unit test yesterday and I don't think I did well, I forgot the chemical of bicarbonate but I'm pretty sure I was able to guess correctly. I don't know how I did there were a lot of questions and I guessed on like the last 6 because I ran out of time. With the last about 10 I just stared going without any re-guard to sig figs and I was able to get an approximate answer which was close to an answer. There was one question about gas conversion I believe, and I had no clue... I'm praying that I did good.

Hydrates and Formula of a Hydrate

On Friday we learned about Hydrates, a hydrate is a compound that contains water as part of its structure it is crystalline structure. The amount of water in a hydrate can be determined by heating all the water out  we did a lab yesterday about hydrates and getting the water out of a hydrate to determine the mass of the anhydrous salt in the compound. The compound that we removed the water from was CuSO4 * xH2O. The amount of water that we found ended up being 5 so its name was Copper (II) Sulfate Pentahydrate it was this really pretty blue crystal that when we heated turned all gray and ashy and it was actually pretty cool.

(This image was supposed to be vertical but after editing

 it and uploading it 6 times I think it wants to be horizontal...)

Dimensional Analysis

(For some odd reason this post didn't publish, the actual post was made 11/2)

So in class we learned about dimensional analysis. It's not too difficult you just have to know the conversion rates for everything then it's pretty straight forward from there. The wiki page for dimensional analysis give a pretty good summary of what exactly it is. I keep getting tripped up on significant digits and what to round to so I looked at the wiki page for significant figures and it helped quite a bit.

Chemical composition pre-test

So we just took the pre test and I was pretty lost on what exactly was going on, there was a string of about 6 questions where I'm pretty sure I got the right answer on but other than that I'm really not sure. It seems like well actually be dealing with chemicals now which I'm excited for but it still seems like there's a lot of math involved which I'm not thrilled about. On my last unit test I got a 75% which isn't a bad score but it certainly isn't the best score you can get, but I'm just happy to get out of that unit, it was pretty confusing to me. I found this link and it explains exactly what a mole is so I have a bit better idea of what was going on in that test but it seems like a whole new thing again, wish me luck...