Trinity and Beyond

Recently in class we were shown a film called Trinity and Beyond showcasing the history and science of the atomic bomb and nuclear weaponry. The beginning of nuclear weaponry started in the WW2 era when America's Manhattan project who's goal was to create the first atomic bomb. This project started because fear of a German nuclear weapon, and attracted many notable scientists such as Albert einstein. After testing they finally managed to create the atom bomb which worked using very fast neutron collisions which start a chain reaction in the form of fission making a large amount of energy as the result. The atom bomb as we all know was used on Japan in the form of two bombs, "Little Boy" and "Fat man", making large amounts of destruction. These explosions may have marked the end of World War 2 but started the race towards new nuclear technologies between Russia and America. From the 40's to the 80's these two nations had continual testing of nuclear weapons making them more powerful. Soon after WW2 the atom bomb design was discarded and eventual testing led up too the more powerful H bomb. The Testing and explosive power came to a cumulation until in the late 80's  when Russia and America signed a treaty putting limits on nuclear weapon stockpiles. Nuclear weapons presented unprecedented amounts of destruction that have potential to cause wide spread destructions.

Photo Gallery

                                                                                                               

Gary the first professor

The electricity guy

The glass blower

Today we we fortunate enough to tour the ASU chemistry wing. There was a lot of demonstrations and science experiments that we saw to day that I learned from and enjoyed watching. The first thing my group did was visit one of the lecture rooms where one of the professors showed us several demo’s showing chemistry. One of the things he showed us was liquid nitrogen. He showed us a few of its physical characteristics. The first thing he told us was that on order for hydrogen to attain its liquid state it has to be very very cold. He then proceeded to pour the liquid all over the floor, however the air was to warm and the liquid nitrogen went back to its gas state before it hit the ground. He also showed us what happened when things were put into liquid nitrogen.  He put a balloon into the cold substance and the balloon shrank. He explained that the atoms in the balloon cooled down so they stayed in a smaller area and the walls of the balloon collapsed to fill in the empty space. Next my group had a little demonstration with light where we learned about a optical illusion. Our next professor had a fan with three different colors on three blades. She also had a strobe light that she could set to whatever frequency of light repetition she wanted. She then turned off the lights and set the light just right to make it appear like the fan was standing still. She said it appeared this way because the light was flashing every full repetition of the fan so we only saw it in one position. Next she gave us another little demonstration in liquid nitrogen  by freezing in it a rubber bouncy ball then as it hit the floor it shattered. It shattered because it was so cold it had actually changed forms from a rubber to a glass. After this my group split in to two even smaller groups and visited two new professors who demonstrated things in their area of science to us. The first man I went to was demonstrating a few electrical labs for us. The first one he did was my favorite. He had all of us hold hands and stand in a line and hold hands and the last one of us put our hand on a metal wall. Then he put his hand on some sort of electricity producing machine. Then he had the last one of us put touch their elbow to his. Before there elbows even touched a spark ran through all of our bodies making me feel a funny sensation in my wrists. He explained that with electricity it wasn’t the amount of voltage that would harm you because we had just been hit with 50000 volts of electricity. It is about the stream of electricity and how fast it is moving. After that he also explained how a particle accelerator works. Then my group rotated to the next scientist who taught us about vacuums He explained how in the a vacuum is any place with an absence of air. Lastly we went to see a professional glass blower who made a wonderful glass swan for us.To round off our day we had lunch with some undergrads and saw the first professor one more time. That was my day at ASU.

Photo Gallery

                                                                                                               

Gary the first professor

The electricity guy

The glass blower

Today we we fortunate enough to tour the ASU chemistry wing. There was a lot of demonstrations and science experiments that we saw to day that I learned from and enjoyed watching. The first thing my group did was visit one of the lecture rooms where one of the professors showed us several demo’s showing chemistry. One of the things he showed us was liquid nitrogen. He showed us a few of its physical characteristics. The first thing he told us was that on order for hydrogen to attain its liquid state it has to be very very cold. He then proceeded to pour the liquid all over the floor, however the air was to warm and the liquid nitrogen went back to its gas state before it hit the ground. He also showed us what happened when things were put into liquid nitrogen.  He put a balloon into the cold substance and the balloon shrank. He explained that the atoms in the balloon cooled down so they stayed in a smaller area and the walls of the balloon collapsed to fill in the empty space. Next my group had a little demonstration with light where we learned about a optical illusion. Our next professor had a fan with three different colors on three blades. She also had a strobe light that she could set to whatever frequency of light repetition she wanted. She then turned off the lights and set the light just right to make it appear like the fan was standing still. She said it appeared this way because the light was flashing every full repetition of the fan so we only saw it in one position. Next she gave us another little demonstration in liquid nitrogen  by freezing in it a rubber bouncy ball then as it hit the floor it shattered. It shattered because it was so cold it had actually changed forms from a rubber to a glass. After this my group split in to two even smaller groups and visited two new professors who demonstrated things in their area of science to us. The first man I went to was demonstrating a few electrical labs for us. The first one he did was my favorite. He had all of us hold hands and stand in a line and hold hands and the last one of us put our hand on a metal wall. Then he put his hand on some sort of electricity producing machine. Then he had the last one of us put touch their elbow to his. Before there elbows even touched a spark ran through all of our bodies making me feel a funny sensation in my wrists. He explained that with electricity it wasn’t the amount of voltage that would harm you because we had just been hit with 50000 volts of electricity. It is about the stream of electricity and how fast it is moving. After that he also explained how a particle accelerator works. Then my group rotated to the next scientist who taught us about vacuums He explained how in the a vacuum is any place with an absence of air. Lastly we went to see a professional glass blower who made a wonderful glass swan for us.To round off our day we had lunch with some undergrads and saw the first professor one more time. That was my day at ASU.

Polymer Lab 2

Question: What will happen if we mix 12ml of sodium _________ and 3 ml of ethynol alchohal what will happen.

Hypothesis: If we mix these two chemicals than we will have a similar reaction as to our first polymer lab.

Results: We started by mixing the two chemicals and and they didn’t react immediately. However, as soon as we started with stirring with the stirring rod we started to see a solid polymer form. The solid was white which was interesting because there were no white substances that were white that went in. The substance that came out felt wet and seemed to be very crumbly. My group made an initial mistake because we were not gentle enough with the larger clumps of material at the beginning so it started to break and became smaller pieces all around the table we had to salvage the material by getting all of the small pieces together and rolling them in our hands until they started to clump.

Before

After

After we got it to clump we rolled it in our hands until we got a ball similar to part of our first polymer test. The polymer we had was very bouncy when we tried this test. Here I compared both polymers.

Polymer from 1st Lab	Polymer from 2nd Lab
. Stretchy . Wet . Gets crumbly after time .Not quite as bouncy .Breaks when stretched .Easy to put together but not strong	.Not stretchy . Started wet but dried quickly .Very crumbly . Bouncy when put together and hard .Harder to put together but very strong

Both polymers had similar characteristics but were different in the end.

Conclusions: Based off this lab we can tell come to a lot of conclusions. I think my hypothesis proved to be true. Though there may be some obvious differences between the two polymers at the core they are still rather close. They were also both formed out of two liquids even though they ended up solid. Also both were similar because they started out wet but the liquid seeped out over time. This test helped illustrate how polymers work. They cross link and form together to make stronger and more dense materials which you can see by both liquids becoming a stronger solid. This test is interesting because neither of these liquids were as viscous as the glue from our first test. This test probably applies majorly in real life because these chemicals may be used to make plastics and toys in real life. This lab illustrated a lot of proprieties of polymers.

Polymer Lab

Image 4 a strand of polymer with monomers in repeating order

Image 3 Our Borox solution

Image 2 our polymer in real life

 Image 1 Our polymer

Hypothesis: If we combine the two solutions than it will become thick and  strong.

Results: When we started with the two separate solutions the borax solution looked like a water with dust in it as expected. The glue solution looked like what it was glue diluted with water. When we proceeded to mix 40 ml of water into the glue solution it the glue began to mix with the borax solution making a solid. It appeared that the glue started expanding out and bonding with the water it made a thick blob that was kind of like silly putty. When we started performing vaious tests with the material we noticed a few things.
For one test we were asked to see how the polymer reacted when stretched fast or slowly. When we stretched it fastly and it snapped quickly however when it was stretched slowly it was able to get longer and thinner before breaking. It was also bouncy as we observed coming up on the table. We had tried to mix food coloring in to give it a green appearance but we did not mix it well enough so it came out splotched with green. As time progressed the blob started to become dryer because it was losing water making it brittle and crumbly. When it had the water it was more elastic and stretchable.
We were also shown how the molecules bonded  on the sheet. the polymer looked like the image 1.We saw that the borox solution B(OH)4 So the bonding part of the compound was the b’s, o’s and h’s in it.
 

Conclusions: Judging by our results I would say my hypothesis was only partially right because I said it would get thick and strong which it did I however didn't say it would go all the way becoming a solid. The chemical change that the borax and water brought caused the glue to become a solid. Throughout this lab we never really had any thing go wrong. The only thing that was slightly problematic was the coloring and that didn't really affect our final product. The lab was very successful.

There are a lot of extensions I would like to try with this lab. We are just scratching the surface of not only this polymers but all of the other ones too. With this we saw some pretty basic bonding with Borox, water, and Glue but we could try and change the variables with more or less borox an we could see if just the borox and glue would have the same reaction without water. Also, we could do research to see if we could find any other chemicals that react with glue and we could test that if we can get the materials. For a final change I was thinking we could add temperature or take it away to see if that affects the chemical process.

ChemThink; Chemical Reactions

1. Starting materials in a chemical reaction are called reactants
2. The ending materials in a chemical reaction are called products
3. The arrow indicates a chemical reaction has taken place
4. All reactions have one thing in common: there is a rearangment of chemical bonds.
5.Chemical reactions always involve old bonds breaking, new bonds being created, or both.
6. In all reactions we still have all of thesame reactants at the end that we had at the start.
7. In every reaction there can never be any destruction atoms or construction
8. Chemical reactions only rearrange the bonds in the atoms that are already there.
9.Let's represent a reaction on paper. For example, hydrogen gas (H2) reacts with oxygen gas (O2) to form water (H2O): H2 + O2 = H2O
If we use only the atoms shown, we'd have 2 atoms of H and 2 atoms of O as reactants. This would make 1 molecule of H2O, but we'd have 1 atom of O leftover. However, this reaction only makes H2O.

Remember: reactions are not limited to 1 molecule each of reactants. We can use as many as we need to balance the chemical equation.

A balanced chemical reaction show
a) What atoms are present before (in the reactants) and after (in the products)
b) How many of each reactant and product is present before and after.

10.  So to make H2O from oxygen gas and hydrogen gas, the balanced equation would be:
2H2 + O2----> 2H2O2
whis is the same as:

# of atoms in Reactants	Element	# of atoms in Products
4	H	4

2

O

2

11.  This idea is called the The Law of Conservation of Mass
12.  There must be the same molecules and the same number of molecules before the reaction (in the reactants) and after the reaction (in the products).
13. What is the balanced equation for this reaction? 2 Cu +1 O2 ----->  2CuO
14. Reactants- 2Cu, O2 Products- 2CuO
15. To balance this equation we would have to add CuO molecules because this reaction doesn’t make lone oxygen molecules.
16. When we add a molecule of CuO now the number of oxygen atoms is balanced but the number of Cu atoms don’t match. Now we have to add more cu atoms to the reactants.
17. the balanced reaction for this equation is 2 Cu +1 O2 ----->  2CuO
Reactants- 2Cu and 1 O2 Product- 2Cu and 1 O2
18. 2CH4 + 4O2----> 4H2O + 2CO2
19. N2+ 3H2----> 2NH3
20. 2KClO3-----> 2KCl + 3O2
21. 4Al + 3O2-----> 2Al2O3

summary

(1)Chemical reactions always involve the breaking or making of bonds.
(2)The Law of Conservation of Mass says that the same atoms must be used for reactants and products
(3)To balance a chemical equation, you change the atoms in front of each substance until there are the same number of each type of atoms in both reactants and products

Alka-seltzer Lab

Hypothesis: If we are to put alka-seltzer in varying degrees of water, then the higher heat will make the alka-seltzer dissolve quicker.

Results: After testing we found that our hypothesis was proven during this experiment. We tested the alka- seltzer at 2,27, and 51 degrees. At 2 degrees it took 143 seconds to dissolve. At 27 degrees it took 31 seconds. Finally at 51 degrees it took19 seconds for the alka-seltzer to fully dissolve. My group thinks that the reason the alka-seltzer reacted quickly with the hot water is because there was more energy in the hot water so the alka-seltzer is reacting faster. With the cold water there was less energy so the reactions happened slowly.
In the future I would like to see if the temperature of the actual tablet would affect the reaction as drastically as the temperature of the water did. I would also like to see if there was some sort of chemical we could add that would stop the alka-seltzer reacting. During the experiment I would also like to see what it looks like on a smaller scale and see smaller clusters of atoms reacting.