Flame Colors

So the main reason I wanted to take Chemistry was to play with fire and chemicals. Now I know doing either one of its safe. But you have to admit its pretty fun and in our last lab we combined the two reasons i really wanted to take Chemisrty FIRE and CHEMICALS. Earlier in the week we learned about the color emission spectrum. It goes from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet this order also goes from the least powerful to the most powerful. We also learned that certain elements emit a colored flame when put into a flame. The electrons of a atom usually try to get as close to the nucleus as possible or its ground state, but when the are put in a flame they gain energy and become excited. When they are excited they dont stay that way, they jump from one level to another the go back to its ground state in less than a second. When they move back to ground state the energy is released in small packets of light called  photons. These photons are what actually make the color that we see. Some elements burn off the same color so you cant exactly tell which element it is by burning it. The way you can tell which element is which is by the light passing through a prism and the Atomic Emission Spectrum. After its passed through it leaves its mark almost like a tattoo. So no matter what you do to the element it will always have to the same absorption spectra. The absorption spectra is when the element absorbs certain colors. No element has the same absorption pattern. So in the lab the elements we test all had names except the last three. The last three where a combination of one of the other elements and we had to guess to which one they where. These are some of the pictures.

H-Bombs

In Chemistry we've been learning about some chemical reactions. So we did a lab called The Atomic Mass Lab. The whole purpose of the lab was to make hydrogen gas. In the lab you needed Clips and shavings of magnesium

and calcium

with Hydrochloric acid.
We used a pneumatic trough, Wheaton Bottles, and graduated cylinders. We had to fill the trough half way then fill the bottles to the brim. Once we filled the bottle we poured the water that was in the bottle into the cylinders to take the mass. After we massed to water we had to fill the bottle back up, covered the top of the bottle and turned it upside down in the trough without getting any air bubbles in the bottle.

When we got the two bottles in the trough we put the acid in the flask along with the magnesium or calcium. Once the bottles where filled it would start bubbling out the sides so we would use the glass cover to take the gas filled bottle out and move the water filled bottle over the hole where the gas would bubble out. To test if we did make hydrogen gas we lit a stick and quickly put in the bottle, this way it would make a "pop" sound. This proved it was hydrogen because hydrogen reacts with fire, that's how H-Bombs explode. Along with learning how to make Hydrogen we learned that the same mass of Magnesium has a greater reaction to HCL than calcium. When we combined the calcium with the acid it took a little less than a bottle and a half to trap the hydrogen gas. When we combined the shavings of Magnesium with acid it took a little over two bottles to trap the hydrogen gas. So out of this lab we learned how to make mini H-Bombs and the reactions of magnesium and calcium with HCL.