Of the many interesting weeks I've had in chemistry, I have to say that this has been the most involved, and fairly difficult weeks to overcome. I didn't have a whole lot of trouble though. I think the involvement has really been my own concentration. Last week, when we had to refer to notes, I didn't have the complete picture.

However when we came back to school I came right back to the material, with the aid of my teacher and my peers. Of course even then it was still unclear, and I think so early in the week that the lab made things even more chaotic...meaning that I was given too much information and not enough instruction, so I didn't know what any of the results really meant until we looked everything over and started completing the practices. In the middle of the week the material suddenly clicked when I realized that we were only balancing equations and neglecting the numbers. Then we talked about reaction types. Then we talked about the numbers.

Wow, that was easy.

In no time I felt like I made a huge leap. During that process though I never mentioned what was going through my mind. During the earlier days of this material I was always on full load, trying to understand everything at once. I find that this happens a lot, that if there's something I don't get, I'm always trying to put it together myself. This didn't come together so quickly, but I will happily report that this week's process along with the help of my peers really made this possible. Also enjoyable were the demos. Those were cool too. I thought this was the most relevant:

4th quarter!

Here we are. The fourth quarter! I'm excited and scared at the same time, but let's get to business.

It was an interesting week. Supposedly a  lot of people did bad on the recent assessment, so we had to make a flow chart of some sort to reinforce our understanding. Although I did just fine, and this little project wasn't totally necessary, I felt that it did a good job to put everything together. Some things I weren't so sure about actually came back to me once I started looking at some notes to do the project. I ended up completing the chart in a day or two, so I could conclude that it both proved and improved my knowledge to a high degree.

Apologizes for the small size. Blogger won't let me bump up the size without format issues.

 

Something I wasn't so fond of was the new partner blog thing. I don't know; maybe it's just because I feel more comfortable working alone or that it's just more simpler, but I don't prefer it. I don't have anything against it; don't get me wrong. If it helps others, then that's okay with me. I'd just rather not use it. That's all. Besides, I think after a few mishaps I learned for myself what these blogs should look like. As far as I know, they contain my thoughts, learning experience, suggestions, and even constructive criticism as I see fit. Since this among other things is apart of a new learning experience, I guess we'll look forward to the rewards.

During the week we also started a new lab and had some visitors. Although the lab was not completed until a later date, I have to express how proud I was during that day. It was so nice to have a peer school come and visit us to learn better teaching techniques. I'm so glad that even in today's competitive world we can still help out a fellow school.

The lab that was conducted (finished from last time) pretty cool, but as of now, I'm very confused on these new reactions for the new material. It's a little boggling to look ahead of the foggy road of knowledge with only an experiment and some worksheets to do. I am looking forward to put this stuff together next week. As far as the experiment went, it was cool, but seemed a little too similar to a previous one. Hmm...have we done this before??

Oh, and by the way, congratulations on the instructor's progress for his award. I haven't gotten to viewing the results, but I am still very proud and happy for his achievement.

Week 25

I really should have done this before break, but it was the last thing on my mind. I'm back though, so I guess I better get back to business.

It's pretty difficult to recall every detail, and most of the events, but I'll try my best.

As we continue through with our unit on the structures of the atom, we began the week with the electrometers we built over the weekend. At first, I didn't really think it was going to work. I didn't even think it was a good idea. Besides, I literally had to improvise most of the design with the materials at hand. So with a little creativity I had this project done in less than 10 minutes on the night before it was due. What shot down this project was that I didn't think it was going to work. Worse, I tried it with a pen rubbed by some other material. After seeing the pen in action during one of our demonstrations, I was sure this was a good way to test my product. Nothing happened, of course, so I packed it up and hoped for the best the next day.

Days later, we actually tested the projects once everyone was finished. To my surprise, this thing actually worked! All it took was a little more "omph" with the charged balloon. Sure enough, there it went. As the class went on, I think I learned about what was going in the project as much as my viewpoint on doing the project itself. I said earlier that I wasn't so much interested in the project. However, as I was learning on the internal mechanics, I then saw the project as an excellent manifestation of the material we are learning. I felt enlightened once the class was over. I saw how this little project, with a little explanation behind it, was able to bring together the things we were learning.

It made sense how the repelling "force" was conducted from the negatively charged balloon through the wire down to the 'nodes.' From there I easily made that connection! I should really look at these projects with more apprehension.

The rest of the week is foggy, but I think it had something to do with more ionic bonds. Most of this was from last week, but I could now say that after the review that was performed, I feel I have a more concrete grasp.

The most memorable thing during the week was the "beach party." When this first came up, I could only think: "My, what now in this parade of various learning exercises does marshmallows, crackers, and chocolate have to do with the structure of an atom?" But when the day came and the secret came, I thought "Oh. Now that's not a bad idea now is it?" I thought that was cool. The demonstration, the activity, and most of all the attitude to just take a break from the material.

Mr. Amore's demonstration was really cool. His way of showing how and why the sun changed colors was nice, even though I already knew it. The actual activity was nice too. I had some fun with my peers. It was a nice transition from constant work and learning to a peaceful and fun break.