Friday, December 9, 2011

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.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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.