This week in chemistry was a wrap up of unit four and and introduction to unit five. With the unit four test on Wednesday, we whited boarded and reviewed Monday and Tuesday in order to prepare for the test. The last concept we learned for unit four was mass and atomic proportions of atoms. We finished learning about this on monday when whiteboarding our answers to Unit 4 worksheet 4. Before discussing this and talking about it I was very confused about mass ratios. I was mainly confused about what the number represented, but after whiteboarding and also receiving after school help I realised that a mass ratio represents a proportion of one element to another in a compound (mass A/mass B). These ratios are also a good way to compare compounds to each other in terms of mass and element proportions. I was very glad to have this figured out once the test came around because there was a question on it.
On Tuesday groups discussed and white boarded the entire Unit 4 review, which was a very productive and useful class period for me. On the review I understood very well how to distinguish between mixtures, pure substances, elements and compounds. This was good because my group members were having trouble with this and we were able to help each other because of it. The one question on the review we didn’t understand was when it asked if the molecules in a previous question were diatomic how many volumes of product would there be. We had a misconception that there would just be the same amount of molecules but each molecule would be twice as big and therefore still only one volume of the product. However we discovered after working with the class that this is not the case. Instead there will be two volumes of the product and twice as many molecules. Working as a class helped us to straighten this confusion out before the test, which I was thankful for.
Once we finished the test we did an activity where we had to guess how many packing peanuts were in a bag as our introduction to Unit 5. Dr.Finnan demonstrated that we can either count every single peanut, or we can take the total weight and divide that by the average weight of one. This is similar to how we find a number of atoms in a given space. This demonstration helped me to visualise what we will be doing in our next unit and was a good way to introduce the concept.
The next following days we did activities and worksheets that began to introduce us to the concept of relative mass. Because we just started learning about this, it’s still confusing for me. Working with the nuts, washers and bolts helped me to visualise what we were doing and I understood how to find the individual masses but once we had to start converting from individual pieces to boxes and barrels I started to get lost. I’m also still trying to figure out the proper way to set up a mathematical equation that involves differents measurements. But I’m sure once we get more into the unit I will begin to really grasp the concept better.
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