Three questions blog... I should really stop procastinating on these...

What have I learned lately?
I have learned about hybridization, I have leanred more specific qualities and properties of the three main types of compounds (ionic, covalent and metallic).

What have I done lately?
I have gotten sick and taken notes. My life is just flush with activity.

What do I hope to do?
Finish getting caught up on things i missed due to my wisdom teeth. Find time to just marinate in laziness. Take up scuba diving. Introduce folk dance to the community. And pass the test coming up on Monday so that I can keep my grade at at least a C so come April I can go to a Cage the Elephant concert.

Classification of solids

...Labs are fun!
Anyway, the most recent lab, Classification of Solids, meant burning innocent test tubes- I mean melting the substances inside the test tubes!- seeing if they were soluble, and seeing if they could conduct electricity. The questions related to this lab were mostly interpreting the results and actual questions relating to the knowledge acquired during the lab.
I suppose I should answer those.
An ionic solid would be soluble in water and conduct electricity in the melt, a network solid would be soluble in organic solvents, a metal would conduct electricity when under pressure (or at just about any other time), and a molecular solid would be slightly soluble in water and slightly conductive in said solution. If a solid was white at room temp, melted at 80 degrees Celsius and the melt had slight electrical conductivity it would be an ionic solid because it is presumably crystalline and conducts electricity. If a white solid melted at 1000 degrees Celsius and was insoluble in all solvents, and didn't conduct electricity at all, it would be an inorganic network solid. Potassium is a metal, Calcium Carbonate is an inorganic network solid, Octane is a molecular solid, and Hydrogen Chloride is a molecular solid as well. Speaking generally, metals are insoluble in water, network solids are ductile and malleable, and about anything but molecular solids are nonvolatile. A test that didn't work well in this lab was the melting portion of the lab because there wasn't enough fire. But really, the lab was very well produced all-around. If I had one complaint, it would be the substances chosen. Some portions there was little to no variety and in others there were no defining factors between substances, even when just looking at them (cobalt chloride excluded).
Night y'all!

Soap is repulsive...

When mixed with water and pepper anyway...
So, what I'm basically saying is that soap spreads on the surface of the water due to the fact that it has both polar and nonpolar poles. This pushes the pepper to the edges. Observe below:

BEHOLD!
So yeah soap is repulsive to pepper. When it's just water and soap, the soap gently floats to the bottom of the cup and then mixes in of sorts.

The yellow tint around the edges is the soap.

Three Questions: The Sequel of the sequel of the sequel of the sequel to the Nth power

What have I done or learned lately? *Inhales deeply for long exposition* ....I got nothin. I could say I learned I'm horrible at taking tests, and that I love Celtic music, but I kind of knew that before. I have been working with the theater on stuff for the Beauty and the Beast musical (performances are in Mid-March, more details on the way) but, being cast as the wardrobe, I just stand there and recite lines with my arms at uncomfortable angles. Honestly, I can hardly even walk in the darn costume. Oh and I'm too tall for it, which means I crouch over more than the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

What am I going to do? Go to the library sometime in the near future and return books. Teach myself how to play the bagpipes and figure skate simultaneously. Take over the world. Finish test corrections and do online Government assignments. And hopefully not spontaneously combust.

Have a nice day everybody!

GRAS: Generally Regarded as Satirical

I kid, I kid. GRAS stands for "Generally Regarded as Safe."

On an absolutely unrelated note which will in no way connect to anything later, there are seven basic food dyes: FD&C Blue No. 1 & 2 (Brilliant Blue FCF and Indigotine), FD&C Green No. 3 (Fast Green FCF), FD&C Red No. 40 & 3 (Allura Red AC and Erythrosine), FD&C Yellow No. 5 & 6 (Tartazine and Sunset Yellow FCF), and Chanel No. 05 (Aubazine).

GRAS standards classify food dyes as: "...any dye, pigment, or other substance that can impart color to a food, drug, or cosmetic or to the human body." (http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ColorAdditives/RegulatoryProcessHistoricalPerspectives/#) It is regulated by individual regulations for each dye. Products that don't comply are subject to enforcement action (recalls, legal actions, etc.), even for only a small amount. The seven food dyes mentioned before (which still don't pertain to anything) are okay-ed by the FDA  for use in "Foods generally." (http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ColorAdditives/RegulatoryProcessHistoricalPerspectives/#) The history of dyes is a rich one, dating back to ancient Rome when dyes for clothing and cosmetics were collected from various plants and, in the case of Tyrian purple (named for the city of Tyre where it was first recorded), shellfish. The celts around the same time period again used plants for war paint and fabric dye. The ancient chinese used vibrant silks as a status symbol, but the poor were mostly stuck with browns and greens, in any culture. Dyes were then used in clothing and cosmetics constantly. In 1856, William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye, and orange color he called mauve (otherwise known as aniline). (http://www.straw.com/sig/dyehist.html) Federal oversight of dyes began in the 1880s, and in 1960 the Color Additives Amendments, later known as GRAS, were put in place. These stated that dyes would be put on a provinional list and only placed on a permanant list when scientifically deemed safe dor human use or comsumption. (http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ColorAdditives/RegulatoryProcessHistoricalPerspectives/#) The GRAS regulations pertain to food as they are responsible for what goes into an average American's meal.

FD&C Blue No. 2 from www.chm.bris.ac.uk

 

FD&C Blue No. 1 from medicinescomplete.com

FD&C Green No. 3 from wikipedia

FD&C Red No. 40, also from wikipedia

FD&C Red No. 3, again from wikipedia

FD&C Yellow No. 5... from (all together now,) wikipedia

FD&C Yellow No. 6, from thearubigin.blogspot.com for a change.

Chanel No. 5 from smithandbrandon.wordpress.com because I could.
Also Aubazine is a convent where Coco Chanel lived in her teenage years with nuns.

Combined 3 questions lab... so... 6 questions lab?

10/4/13:

• What did we do this week?

• What did we learn?

• What are we going to do?

This week was the week of redox reactions, and we also covered titrations (if memory serves). I learned ...about redox reactions. Really, nothing much stands out about that week but homecoming, and I only remember that because I forgot to wear a fancy hat that Tuesday.

11/1/13:
Three questions about the past few weeks. 
Well, theater has been sucking what little life I have left, between Fright Fest, Nora's Lost, and Farmington one act festival (state champs yay sleepy time now). Reading Crime and Punishment in AP Lit has been interesting, if a little hard to follow occasionally. French is... french. C'est bien, mais ca n'est pas facile ("It's good, but it isn't easy" for the non-polyglots out there). The Common Application for colleges has been kicking my glutes every which way, and I still fail to see how the year my mom graduated is relevant. 
What have I learned recently? Arabic, I suppose. And chemistry stuff, but that bit's obvious. I've been a bit too busy to retain anything lately, but one-act is over, so that should tone down a bit. Theoretically.
What do I plan to do now? Catch up on my rest when I'm not in my French class (desolee, Madame). Still working on balancing life and school, especially in the creative area. I haven't heard the click of keyboard as I type out cheesy stories at one A.M. enough lately. I miss posting cringe-worthy fanfiction on the internet. [insert overly dramatized sigh here].

Really Late Sticky Situation Lab

Yeah this was due last Friday. I swear I will smack my forehead with some form of heavy book later. Right now I need all my brain cells to do this blog. So, without further ado, A Sticky Situation, The Blog.

• Review the definition and process of solubility and solvation

• What are intermolecular forces?

• What role do these forces play in solvation? 

• Why is the phrase "like dissolves like" employed to explain differences in solubility?

Solubility: Basically how easily something breaks down and is absorbed into another substance.
Solvation: The ionic attraction of molecules (while in a solvent) to other molecules.
Intermolecular forces are the forces of attraction and repulsion betwixt molecules, as indicated by the "inter-" in the name. 
IMFs affect solvation because they decide the strength between molecules, similar to how they affect the boiling point of various chemicals.
"Like dissolves like" is used to explain differences in solubility because, to be brief, solutions will dissolve solutions with similar structures.