Nuclear Fusion and Fission

Nuclear fusion sound amazing when you think about it. Taking two elements smashing them together to create a new, heavier element sounds like it comes out of a science fiction movie. The fact that it can be used to create energy without the harmful radioactivity, like it can in fission, can mean a lot of green opportunity, and we are closer to this than you might think.

It's also cool that the only place we know of nuclear fusion happening is in a top of a line lab, like this

and at the center of stars. Stars create elements, and that seem crazy to me.

Nuclear fission, on the other hand, is the spitting of an atom into two lighter ones. And we do this, like a lot. Around 25% of electricity in the U.S. is created with fission, and a lot more in France, around 85%! A fifth of the world energy is provided by nuclear power plants, even though they might have some fundamental problems.

Overall, fission and fusion seems pretty cool, even if it can be dangerous.

Forensic Archaeology

In this lab that we were given on Monday my lab partner and I were given a situation where we had to find the half life of imaginary atoms. This was done by using small squares that had a dark side and a white side. 567 squares were put into a cup and randomly poured on the table. The paper squares with the white sides were taken out. This was repeated six times.

When doing this experiment, I started to wonder how often the half life of an object is correct. Is the half life more of average time, or an exact time. By what Mrs. Frankenburg has said, it seems that the half life is always correct. In statistics I've learned about predicted lines, and I think that the lines of a half life graph are probably the predicted lines, but probably a good average due to extensive research on atoms. 

Forensic archaeology is the application of archaeology to criminal investigations. Part of archaeology is using the half life to predict the age of something, such as a old human items. The main use of forensic archaeology is to figure out the age of a body, similar to the what we were doing in the lab.

Weekly Quiz

Today was the weekly quiz over everything that we have learned so far. I feel like I did pretty well except for the last 8 or so questions, which where about what scientist had a certain model for the atom or the way they figured out their model for the atom. There was a lot on Isotopic Symbols which were pretty simple but I couldn't for the life of me remember the difference in between JJ Thompson, the Bohr Model, and Retherford's gold foil experiment.

Issues with Isotopes

Elements come in one variety, that would be too simple. Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different masses. This is possible because atoms of the same element can have different number of neutrons, subatomic particles with no charge that give the atom mass.

Wow

So basically most elements on the periodic table have two or more forms of themselves, which can have different properties. Although I've known of isotopes for a long time, mainly because of Hank Green and SciShow, I've never really thought about how they worked or or written out, in an isotopic symbol, which looks like:

While I don't think it's all that confusing, chemistry, elements, and just life in general, just got a little harder. 

Astrochemisty

For the next project in class, we are learning about astrochemistry. Astrochemistry can be defined "study of the abundance and reactions of chemical elements and molecules in the universe, and their interaction with radiation", which ties in well to our unit on atomic structure and radioactivity. As you would probally guess, NASA would be a major part of research in the US. 

This project is mainly about identifying solar bodies and their chemical make-up, and doesn't seem that hard, and rather more interesting than the last project.

Hidden Shapes

Yesterdays lesson was simple, but the activity was rather intriguing. We learned about atomic theory, such as Dalton's theory, JJ Thompson, Retherford's gold experiment and the Cloud model. You know. simple stuff.

While the lesson was rather bland, the activity was interesting. My partner and I had black out petri dishes with shapes in them and a ball. By simply moving them around, we where to guess what shape was inside the dish. As you could guess, we where pretty bad, especially at first. This active seemed useless at first, but from what I can guess, it was used to show us how finding out what was inside something you couldn't see, like an atom, is pretty difficult.

The Rest of the Unit

After getting over the initial shock of the first day of lecture, and doing the suggested homework, the rest of the unit made sense. Type 2 and 3 make so much more sense than type one, especially type 3. If all of Nomenclature was like type 3 it would very easy.

I was rather irritated with polyatomic ions, because their is no trick to learning them, they have to be remembered. And the day before the test it turns out I was studying the wrong things, so that was a huge pain to learn 21 chemical formulas and names in 24 hours.

Naming Binary Compounds

Theirs a reason that your supposed to read the textbook before you get to class. The first day in lecture, I didn't understand anything. My teacher started talking and it was in one ear, out the other. Anion, Cation, Ionic Compound didn't make a difference, I was clueless to what she was talking about. 

To be fair, by the look of a few of my classmates, I wasn't the only that was as lost as a fish out of water.Thankfully I had enough sense to go over the practice work that came out of the book, so I managed to do pretty well on the quiz.