Macroscale Quantum Mechanics

In my chemistry class we have been going over quantum mehnacis. Quantum mechanics is when one is able to predict the theories of microscopic particles and how they work. Here is a link that will explain more about quantum mechanics.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/ .
Anyways based on the video called Macroscale Quantum Mechanics, what is so significant about quantum mechanics is that it can explain theoretical how particles work and not the literal concept of how the particles work. In other words in the literal concept will not agree with the theoretical concept because it can not be proven. An example from the video is that quantum mechanics is able to explain how particles are able to be at two places at once and are able to go through larger objects, like walls. The literal concept of how particles work is that the particles can not be at two places at once and are not able to go through larger objects. This impacts day to day chemistry by making one think why can't humans go through walls and be at two places at the same time since humans are made out of particles.
Here is also a link for a video that will explain quantum mechanics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp73KRX-t1k

Airbags

Airbags save lives in car crashes but there is science behind that is involved in order for the airbags to work properly. The science that is involved is called the law of motion. According to the article How Airbags Work states this about the law of motion in air bags " First, we know that moving objects have momentum (the product of the mass and the velocity of an object). Unless an outside force acts on an object, the object will continue to move at its present speed and direction. Cars consist of several objects, including the vehicle itself, loose objects in the car and, of course, passengers. If these objects are not restrained, they will continue moving at whatever speed the car is traveling at, even if the car is stopped by a collision.", explaining how the law of motion is used in order for the airbags to work. 
Another science that is involved in airbags is the gas laws. Some of the gas laws are Boyle's gas law , Charles's Law , and Avogadro's Law.  The gas law that is involved is Charles's Law because when the temperature of the nitrogen gas increase so does the volume thus inflating the airbag. The link above of the article How Airbags Work gives more information of how the airbags and how it is a safety device in car. Here is a link to a video that will show how an airbag will work in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7iYZPp2zYY

Explosives

At first I thought explosives were just used for fireworks and in the military, but explosives are more complex then you think. The laws of thermodynamics, endo- and exothermic reactions and enthalpy help to create explosives. The law of thermodynamics is energy that cannot be created or destroyed, specifically heat and heat capacity. Endothermic reactions is when heat is absorbed by the system from the surroundings. Exothermic reactions is when heat is released by the system into the surrounding. Enthalpy is the heat flow and the internal energy of the reaction.

Explosive Engineers uses thermodynamics, endothermic, exothermic reactions, and entrapy in order to design the explosives. When designing explosives, the engineers want to produce rock fragments of a certain size and low vibration levels. Explosives are made by detonating which means to explode on contact. According to the this link
http://www.explosives.org/index.php/component/content/article?id=71 detonation is a fast chemical reaction that uses oxygen in the material, instead of in the air, to explode. When the reaction happens gases are released and expands. Energy is also released when the reaction becomes hot like an exothermic reaction. After an explosive goes off, the engineers then uses enthalpy in order to see what can be changed about the explosive. Then the engineers will try again until they get the perfect size of rock fragments and low vibration levels.

GE Power & Water Uses Titration

In my chemistry class we have been going over titration. I really hadn't heard of titration until now. I have learned that titration is an analytical technique in which one can calculate the concentration of a solute in a solution. An example is you have 15.0 mL of HCl neutralized by 25.0 mL of 0.75M NaOH. What was the concentration of the HCL?
.025 L NaOH/1 x .75 mol NaOH/1 L NaOH x 1 mol HCl/ 1 mol HCl = .01875 mol HCl

.01875 mol HCl/.015 L = 1.25 M HCl

The concentration of the HCl is 1.25 M.
Here is a link to a video that will demonstrate a titration calculation similar to the one that is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BllRQAc76Y0

GE Power & Water Company use titration calculations in their research to clean water.  They work closely with water plants to analyze wastewater by using titration, which is easier to use then other methods. Here is a link to a website that explains more about titrations being used in GE. http://www.gewater.com/handbook/control_water_analyses/ch_39_analyticalmethods.jsp

Reactions to Reactions: Glow Sticks

Why should anyone be aware of chemical reactions? In chemistry one can see how molecules interact with each other and understand how things work. Chemical reactions can help in your daily life, for example when digesting food. By knowing how food is digested one can know what nutrition is needed  in order to stay healthy. Here is a link to explain more about why we should be aware of chemical reactions. http://www.helium.com/items/2037177-importance-of-learning-chemistry


 Another common reaction used in everyday life is glow sticks. Glow sticks are used by scuba divers and campers in order to see in the dark. The chemical reaction of the glow stick is hydrogen peroxide solution, phenyl oxalate ester and fluorescent dye solution nixed together  This reaction releases energy just like an incandescent light bulb.  The electrons then become excited and race to a higher energy level then returns to the normal energy level releasing the energy as light. This is called chemiluminesence. There are more steps involed for this chemical reaction. Here is a link explaining more on how the glow stick works and the process of it.   http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/light-stick1.htm. Here is the final chemical equation for the glow sticks ;cyalume + H₂O₂ + dye → trichlorophenol + 2CO₂ + dye[♦]Here is also a link to a video that will show how to make a home made glow sticks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH19EIf5GtE

The Poisoner's Handbook

From my reading, I have been able to learn that the chief of medical examiner, Charles Norris, and the toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, have led forensic chemistry in New York. This book gets more interesting every time I read it. I was expecting this book to be boring, but I have been fasinated by what medical examiners and toxicologist must do in order to identify a poison in a human body. I didn't realize what the toxicologist must do in order to find a poison. For example to find cynaide in the body the author states " Any cyanide would be concentrated in the clear fluid contained by that last well-chilled flask." pg 60, explaining what Gettler had just finished doing in order to find the cyanide. In my reading I have also realized how important it was to have a forensic hall in big cities that way the medical examiners and toxicologist can help solve murders involved with wood alcohol, cyanides and other poisons. I can't wait to continue reading this book.  Here is a link for the book review. http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/The-Criminalist/The-Poisoner-s-Handbook/ba-p/2175

Baby Bottle Lab

   

In chemistry class we did a lab with baby bottles. Weird yes, but interesting.  We needed to come up with the perfect formula with sodium bicarbonate and vinegar that would let the baby bottle travel in a 600cm gutter filled with water. My formula that I came up with was 9 grams of sodium bicarbonate and  125 mL of vinegar. It took me 9 trials in order to get my formula . What confounded me in this lab was that someone would try a certain amount of sodium bicarbonate and vinegar and the baby bottle would travel the 600cm. I would then try the same formula but I was not able to make the full 600cm. In this lab I was also able to learn about limiting reactants. Limiting reactant is the smallest stoichiometric amount in the reactant. In other words the limiting reactant is the reactant that you'll run out of first. In this lab the limiting reactant was the sodium bicarbonate. What I would do differently in this lab would be to start off  with large amounts of sodium bicarbonate and vinegar instead of small amounts that way if I need to I can decrease my amounts. I will continue my trial and errors until I get the prefect formula.

Oceans in Danger

 I have just finished reading an article called Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanity's Ability To Feed Itself from a paper.li called Future of the Earth. What interested me in reading this article was how the acid was effecting the oceans. The ocean gets the acid from the carbon in the air. When there is carbon in the air, temperature rises and carbon goes into the water faster. This process has being going on since the oceans were form. Why is there so much acid in the oceans now? Well with most people having cars, factories and what not, there is more carbon that is put in the air everyday. The temperature rises and the carbon going into the oceans increase faster then ever before.  According to the article, 300 millions ago the acids in the ocean increased just as fast as it is today. So why does it matter if it already happened once? Scientists have found some sediments from that time period. The results were that the amount of carbon in the fossils was doubled compared to other fossils in different time periods. Also scientists found a single - celled organisms that used to live on the bottom of the ocean had gone extinct because of the carbon in the water. By finding this organism the scientists suggested that the organisms that were on top of the food chain had also gone extinct. Why does this effect us? We can learn from the past so that it may not effect the future. We must pay more attention to how much carbon goes into the air and into the water that way no more marine animals can become extinct  like coral reefs and clams.

Moles

                           

 This past week in my chemistry class we have been going over moles and how to use it. A mole is a unit of measurement that shows the amount of something. For example, 1 mole of carbon-12 has a mass of 12g. This is also the molar mass. The molar mass is the mass of 1 mol of a substance. To find the molar mass of an element we find the mass number of the element on the periodic table. To find the molar mass in a chemical formula one needs to find the formula weight. The formula weight will be the same number as the molar mass. The only difference is that formula weight is in amu while molar mass is in grams. Here is a link of an example of how to calculate the formula weight http://chemistry.about.com/od/workedchemistryproblems/a/Molecular-Formula-Simplest-Formula-Example-Problem-1.htm .

 Moles also provide a bridge from the molecular scale to the real-world. To do this one must know Avogadro's number. Avogadro's number is 6.02 x 10^23. The diagram to the right shows how to use moles. Some of the mole relationships are  that 1 mole of atoms, ions, or molecules contains Avogadro's number in those particles and 1 mole of molecules or formula units contains Avogadro's number times the number of atoms or ions of each element in the compound. To understand more about moles and to figure them out here is a link to a  website http://misterguch.brinkster.net/molecalculations.html.

The Poisoner's HandBook By Deborah Blum
     For my literacy glog I chose to read The Poisoner's HandBook.  I chose  this book because it is about how forensic science started in the roaring twenties. What caught my interest in reading it, was how many poisons were not able to be detected through forensic evidence and how forensic science has changed over time. So far on what I have read, I have found out that many murders were every hard to investigate because many of the poisons were hard to find in a human body. According to the book on page 10 for example the poison chloroform, a person could take one-third of an ounce, and would die within minutes. An autopsy in the book stated ""Therefore we can establish nothing by exhuming the bodies. Mors may have given each of his victims a quart of chloroform but we couldn't prove it by an autopsy."" pg13. When I read this sentence I was fascinated on how much has changed over time. In autopsy then, one was not able to determine poisons in a body, but now with new technology one is able to determine in an autopsy how much of a poison is the body and what type of poison was consumed by the person.

The Ultimate Change

This past week, my chemistry class has been going over significant figures. Through all the stress, I was finally able to understand the importance of it.  So why are significant figures so important?

 

Well for one, significant figures help to get a better accuracy in measurements . For example, one can be trying to install tile into a house. Say that the dimensions of the room are 10ft x 4ft or are they  really 10.35ft x 4.81ft. By saying the dimensions with more accuracy, this can help the person  figure out how much tile will be needed for the room. If one did not now the other .35ft x .81ft, then how will one know how much tile needs to be cut in order to place closer to the wall.  Another example is that significant figures can change a theory  and make a discovery just like in the blog called Neutrino Physics. Yes, knowing significant figures can help one save money on buying tile, but making a discovery by using significant figures is really impressive!

Silk and the Samurai's Sword

Silk and the Samurai's Sword might be different from each other, but they  have something in common. They both  have gone through a chemical change. Silk is a modern day wonder while the Samurai Sword has been used for centuries.

The chemical change that silk has gone through is water turning into a  protein fiber. This happens when the silk solution sets at room temperature and letting the protein fibers assemble by themselves. Next the solution is boiled, then the protein fibers are detach while the water is evaporating. This process makes silk. The silk can now be used for various things, for example to create gears, bolts and senors. Silk is also biocompatible. This means that it can be implanted into the body with no harm done to the living tissue.  

The chemical change that the Samurai's Sword has gone through is the mixing of iron and charcoal to create steel. This happens when iron and charcoal are heated together in a tatara for 3 nights and days. After the steel has been heated it is separated into two groups, high carbon and low carbon. The high carbon is used for the razor shape edge of the sword, while the low carbon is tough and allows for shock absorption. A blacksmith will then shape the high carbon steel so that the low carbon may be able to fit in the high carbon steel. This allows for the perfect balance of properties which is the samurai's most durable and prized weapon (taken from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/crafting-samurai-sword.html, 1/26/12). To make the distinctive curve on the sword, the sword is then heated again to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit . After that the sword is placed into a shallow container of water to cool. The speed of the contraction in the water between the low and high carbon causes it to bend. Thus creating the Samurai's Sword

sources

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/crafting-samurai-sword.html, 1/26/12

http://virtualgardnerblogs.weebly.com/chemistry.html, 1/26/12

me

I am very passionate about everyting having to be perfect. If it is not perfect, I get mad at my self for it not being perfect. Then I have to do it again untill I think it is perfect. I don't know why everything has to perfect. I just like it like that.