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 3rd 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.
