Olivia's week at Chem Camp

Chemistry camp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this week [Monday through Friday] I went to chemistry camp. I had a lot, lot, lot of fun and met some people I hope to see again. I am kind of going to put everything in a list and pick my favorites from that day, and explain them.

          Monday was chromatography and color, [which was quite messy; we have pictures to prove it].Here is Monday’s list.

   Rainbows in a tube

   Marbled notes

   The universal rainbow?

   Chromatography [whatever could it mean?]

   The case of the missing lunches……

Before I explain anything, I have to tell you of the case of the missing lunches…

        Ms. Mary had stayed inside while we, the students, and Ms. Peg explored. We found a tree house and a pond. It was almost lunch time when we came back in. we sat down at the tables and on the smart board it said: problem, your lunches have been stolen. Solution, and then it was blank. Our solutions were to A) interrogate ms.mary, B) look for clues, or C) have Spencer, Nathaniel, Patrick, and Tommy share their lunches with us. Guess which one we chose. A!!!!!!!!!!! JK. We chose b. sure enough, a clue was on the table. It read “if you can figure out the markers I will give you your lunches back.” Since we had done chromatography [color data] earlier in the morning, we ripped apart the note and soaked it in alcohol, isophl propel, and water. By careful comparison we found out that she [Mrs. Mary] had used a rose art blue, crayola brown, and a permanent black. This Monday story was really long so I’ll go to Tuesday.

          Under pressure, pushing down on me, pushin’ down on you, under pressure. Tuesday put us under a ton of pressure. Air pressure, that is.

·       Bottle rockets

·       The great balloon race

·       Shrink wrap the kid and take out the garbage!

·       Pressure in a station

·       Creature

·       The crushed can

·       The balloon in the bottle

I probably forgot some, but I want to talk about creature. Creature is a really fun game with three people to a team. One is the observer, one is the runner, and one is the builder. You have to build something with legos and whoever gets it the closest or exact wins. There is an object in a box and only the observer can look at it. The observer can stand at a certain area but they can’t go out of that space. The runner gets instruction from the observer about how to build it and the runner then takes the instructions to the builder, like the 6 dot green in the 3^rd row is next to the white 8 dot, ECT. The runner is kind of like the messenger because they carry the instructions and any questions the builder [or the runner] may have.BTW, my team tied for second. Moving on, I’m now going to talk about shrink wrapping the kid. That reminds me of the golden rule of science: science never sucks. No, literally, air can’t suck. It can only push. So for shrink wrapping, there was a trash bag that you took off your shoes and sat in. you held the nozzle of a vacuum and held it so it didn’t touch the bag.  The pressure inside the bag was less than the outside because of the vacuum and the pressure outside pushed the trash bag in and enclosed you, like wearing a blanket or a snuggie. Real quick I’ll say about the great balloon race, which was where we strung a string across the room and came up with designs to make it [sorry ms.peg, the balloon] go all the way across the room. The simplest designs, one balloon blown up, worked the best, but let’s go on a whole ‘nother course.

Wednesday was a quiet, sit and observe day. It was kinda random, do whatever.

We:

ü Played with bottle rockets

ü Holes in a bottle

ü Alka-Seltzer

ü One floats, the other doesn’t

ü Which is faster?

ü Glow sticks

ü Drops on a penny

ü A bunch of stuff I can’t remember at all…..

Okay I went and grabbed my journal but all I have are the observation stations. So I will explain alka seltzer, holes in a bottle, and which is faster. I’m starting with holes in a bottle, which was where a plastic bottle   had a hole in it and you put your finger on the hole, filled up the bottle, screwed the cap on tight, and when you took your finger off the water wouldn’t come out. Which is faster was where you had to observe two mystery liquids [oil and water] and see which one the penny dropped faster in [it was water]. Last but not least alka-seltzer. We took warm and cold water and put alka-seltzer in it and the warm water made it bubble faster because heat makes molecules speed up. On to polymers!!!!!!

          Thursday was polymers. Polymers are long chains of carbon and hydrogen. We did:

v Ooblek

v Slime

v Clay heads

v Disappearing water?

v Water loc beads

v Diaper filling

v We also rotted our brains but watching TV.

Polymer means literally ‘many monomers’ I’ll be explaining ooblek, slime, and a mystery polymer. My favorite was the messy, messy oobleck. Oobleck is corn starch with water in it. If you work it and apply pressure it becomes hard but if it relaxes it turns into a liquid. It also stuck to your hands, I got some on my pants, and some people got it on their shirts even. ;). The slime was made of 0ne part water, one part glue, and a little borax solution. As you turn it and stir it it becomes a solid. Then you had to work it [the slime, sorry] like bread dough, as one way to put it. My mysterious polymer is…. Diaper powder? Diapers have a polymer inside the pad because polymers absorb liquids. That’s also what we used in the missing water experiment. She put diaper powder in one cup and water in another and switched the cups and poured the water in the cups and then poured it in the cup with the powder. The powder absorbed the water making it appear to have disappeared. Now to the last day, Friday.

          On Friday we did fire and ice, explosions and carbon dioxide. A quick lesson; fire = heat+energy. Fire creates h₂o and co₂, water and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is NOT flammable. In fact, we did quite a cool experiment with it. We did:

o   Fire in a bottle

o   Light saber

o   Mentos in pop

o   Dowse the candle with co₂

o   Baking soda and vinegar

o   Air hockey

o   Dry ice in a indicator, a.k.a the mad scientist

o   Spark-l-ers

o   Tea bag rockets

o    Presentation

Air hockey and the mad scientist go together; along with baking soda+vinegar and dowse the candle with co₂.but first I’ll start with the mad science. We put water in a cup and added the universal indicator, which showed if it was an acid [yellow/red], neutral, [green] or a base [blue/purple/ dark green] by changing colors. Water is a neutral so it turned green. We put in dry ice and fog came out, that was water condensation. It also turned the water from a neutral to an acid. How air hockey and this relate is because of the dry ice.ms. Peg told us to hit it around the table and what did it remind us of. We said air hockey and we were right because of the heat from the table it forms a layer of carbon dioxide and that was what it was floating on like air hockey. Before that, we put baking soda and vinegar in a bowl and that created carbon dioxide. Because carbon dioxide is denser than the air it stayed in the bowl and you could put it in a cup and pour it. It is NOT flammable so you can put a candle by it and it will blow out. So we tried to scoop up the carbon dioxide and pour it out on the candle and it went out!!!!!!!!!!!! We put mentos in coke too and we put it in on the table and the pin pulled out prematurely and we got coke on us.

          All in all chem Camp was very fun and I hope to do it next year.