Groff,+Kevin

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"An Invisible Fire" had a good message behind it. When dealing with chemicals that could potentially be hazardous, we should use appropriate caution. William Turner almost lost his arm due to carelessness. He should have checked the label and been aware that he needed to wear gloves when handling the contents. I'm surprised the hydrofluoric acid didn't penetrate deeper and cause more of a problem. He got lucky and this was a good story to help others not to make the same mistake.

One fact I found interesting from "Influences of Ancient Greek on Chemical Terminology" was that the word "chemistry" comes from the word "khem" (refers to the land of Egypt and the mysterious arts practiced there), or the Greek word "cheo" (meaning I cast or pour). I also found it interesting that Lanthanum has the Greek root "Lanthano" which means "to hide." This is because it escaped detection in the mineral cerite until 1839. Another interesting Greek-derived name is Titanium. It comes from the Greek root "titans" which was named for the sons of Uranos by Klaproth who had already discovered uranium. It's fascinating that Greek mythology already knew about this.

Kevin, Awesome post! Glad you found some interesting stuff! MW

I read the article titled, "Offshore Wind May Power the Future." I found it interesting that we could have a wind energy farm in the ocean. This clearly shows the development of wind energy over the past years. Wind turbines will no longer be taking up space on land and they will be far away from potential harm or tampering. I learned that these offshore parks can produce more energy than nearshore and onshore sites. This article is pertinent to our class because we are learning about the different ways of producing energy and it gave me more details about the pros and cons of wind energy.

Kevin, I agree that putting wind turbines in the ocean would be better so that they would not have to take up large fields on land.

Kevin, Ocean winds are typically pretty strong. We'll see if anything comes of that. MW

"Polymers In the Field" I found it interesting how technologically advanced our school's football field is. It seems that they thought everything out before making it. Including the gentle slope so rainwater runs off, and the percolated turf base so that the water can then be collected in a retention basin underneath. I learned that the field is made up of recycled rubber granules that used to exist as consumer automobile tires while the track is made up of rubber (or first time use) rubber polymer, causing it to be more expensive. I found it pertinent to chemistry class that they sprayed water on the field to cool it down. In class, we learned about how water has a high heat capacity, making it a perfect agent for resisting heat on the field.

Looks good Kevin. MW

This oil and water article was an interesting piece of writing that reenforced many ideas that I already know about the properties of oil and water. For instance, oil is less dense than water which causes it to end up on top when the two are mixed. It also explains a few points about hydrogen bonding that we have gone over in class. This includes the fact that extremely strong dipole-dipole forces are present among molecules where H is bonded directly to F, O, or N. However, I did learn that oil molecules are even more attracted to water molecules than they are to other oil molecules. This is because dipole-induced dipole attractions occur between oil and water molecules which are stronger than the induced-dipole-induced dipole attractions between neighboring oil molecules. This confused me because I know that oil and water dont mix when they are put in the same container so when I read this fact i thought that logic states that they should mix. However, I read on and learned that the hydrogen bonding between water molecules is so strong that it won't let any oil come between any two water molecules.The article also explains the experiment of dropping water onto wax paper. We went over this in class and I know that the water beads up because the paper is hydrophobic and the water molecules are extremely attracted to one another. One more interesting fact I learned was that hydrogen bonding in water creates a large amount of cohesive energy. Kevin, Very thorough! Good job! MW

I thought this was a very intriguing article that relates perfectly to what we are learning in class. I learned a lot of interesting pieces of information by reading it. For instance, I did not know that in the solid phase, the molecules are still moving. More specifically, this involves bonds stretching and compressing or the atoms wiggling a little bit. This reminds me of Mr. Williams showing us the 3 phases using the big pretzel jar (i think it was pretzels...) and a bunch of bouncy balls. So this must be what he meant when he would move it back and forth ever so slightly so that the bouncy balls would vibrate at a relatively slow rate. This is called vibrational motion. I also learned that you can purify salty water by freezing a portion of the solution and washing the salty water off of the ice crystals and then thawing the ice. I feel like this would be a pretty cool thing to try out sometime and then taste the product to see if I actually could produce pure water. I also did not know that at the surface of ice crystals, water molecules are not as stable as they are on the interior. This is pretty much the basis of understanding how salt helps to melt snow or ice that is already on the road.

This article about hand warmers immediately attracted my attention for multiple reasons. I am an avid snowboarder and am constantly out in subfreezing temperatures for prolonged periods of time. Handwarmers (or hot hands as I call them), have grown to be a necessity to me everytime I visit the mountain. I love the simplicity of them. All you have to do is give them a good shake and you can almost immediately feel the effects. I also knew (once I took honors chemistry) that this is an exothermic process because the handwarmers are giving off heat. However, I've never known the science behind them. For instance, I was ignorant to the fact that those little pouches contain iron powder, salt, water, an absorbant material, and activated carbon. I also did not know that the reason they get hot is because once they are exposed to the air, oxygen goes through the pouches permeable covering. Then, with salt and water present, the oxygen reacts with the iron powder to form iron oxide and release heat. I found this pretty interesting that the reason my hands stay warm while I'm snowboarding is directly related to some of the reactions we've learned in class. Also, I've known that handwarmers can get pretty toasty, but I didn't know that they can average a temperature of 135 degrees Farenheit. That's a lot higher than the temperature I would've guessed. Another thing I learned is that to increase the life of the warm puppy, some companies simply put more iron powder in the packets. This makes sense to me because there is pretty much an unlimitted supply of oxygen in the air so if there is more iron powder to react with, the reaction will extend for a longer time to completion.

Wow! Lots of connections here! Great post. 5 big stars! MW

So I'll start this post off with the honest truth that I've never had real maple syrup. However, after reading this article, I think I might as well try it since I know the fundamentals of creating maple syrup as we know it. I've always known that I've been using the sacrine substitute because it never actually says the words "maple syrup" on the bottle. I also knew a couple obvious truths such as that maple syrup comes from drilling into maple trees and collecting maple sap. But I did not know the reason for using maple trees when there is such a large variety of trees in the US alone. I discovered that the sugar maple, the black maple, and the red maple provide most of the sap for syrup production. This is because they have a longer sap-collecting season and the sugar content of their sap is higher than other species at about 2%-2.5%. This still didn't seem to me like a very large quantity of sugar which led me to wonder how this sap became the maple syrup in my refrigerator. I read on and learned that about 98% of the water in sap must be removed to make syrup and that it takes almost 50 gallons of sap just to make one gallon of syrup. This is done by either heat-induced evaporation or by reverse osmosis followed by evaporation. I was then thrown back into the dreaded fire as I read that it takes about 2600 kJ to evaporate 1 Liter of sap into syrup. This seems like a pretty complex process and I think that the least I can do is try a little "real" maple syrup the next time I sit down for some pancakes.

Kevin, Good writing! Very amusing. I think you would enjoy real maple syrup. Funny though, my kids like the fake stuff better?? Go figure! 5 super saccharine stars! MW

Flaking Away Before reading this article, I knew that the rusting of steel is a redox reaction, and that the iron is oxidized. I was also aware that certain places in the steel rust more than others. However, I did not know that these places are due to physical strain, which creates stress points in the metal This creates anodic regions where the iron is more easily oxidized than it is at others. I also knew that water was involved in this reaction, but was ignorant to the scientific explanation of this. Water is a solvent for ions produced when the iron metal loses electrons at the anodic region. These electrons are conducted through the metal to the cathodic region where they react with water and oxygen to form hydroxide ions. The ions in this electrolyte solution react to form ferrous hydroxide, which then forms rust (insoluble ferric oxide), after reacting with oxygen. Finally, I learned that salt makes water a better conductor and speeds the rusting process by allowing the anode and cathode to be in touch even better. -KG

KG, Well done! 5 stars! MW