Mini Project 2 - Bottle Pipes

To make bottle pipes, you just fill glass jars with different amounts of water and blow air across the top of the jar to make a sound. You can play great songs with this experiment.

Anyways, I tried this and it was easy, but it didn't work out very well. Oh well, it was so VERY fun to play with...

The Science?

• The different masses of air inside make the vibrations.
• With less air (and more water), the sound is higher pitched because there isn't a lot of air to move around.
• With more air (and less water), the sound is deeper because there is a lot of air to move around with.
• Basically, with more air mass, there is more movement, creating the vibrations needed to create sound!

Chem Standard Final

So this is my final! Yay! My standard is:

7C: Students know energy is released when a material condenses or freezes and is absorbed when a material evaporates or melts.

I'd first like to start with energy being released when a material condenses or freezes. A good simulation of that is when you put water in a freezer. Its a pretty simple experiment. Put a glass of liquid water in a super cold freezer, an

d whala, you get some ice! It happens because cold stuff makes atoms move less. Back to the water, the water molecules just stop moving, changing from the moving liquid water to the slick ice! Yes, feel the ice, it's very cold compared to the water. I found a video here that shows water molecules freezing. Its pretty cool!

Well, whats really happening is as you take energy away, the molecules can't move as much. Think of it like the molecules are getting tired and don't want to move too much. Well, when the molecules move, it turns into a solid. We solid? - ignore the stupid joke...

The next part of the standard that energy is absorbed when a material evaporates or melts. To check that out, first, put your hand over an open flame... Ok, don't do it because thats stupid and dangerous. But, really, you can already feel how hot an open flame is. The flame is the energy that you are going to use. Now, put a pot of room temperature, liquid water on top of the flame. Just wait a while, and soon, you'll see a whole bunch of steam coming out. That steam is actually fast moving water particles moving so fast it moves as a liquid. By adding a whole ton of heat, which you did by putting a pot of water over an open flame, you added energy to the water, boiling it up and turning it into a gas (water vapor). Isn't that amazing!? Well, that just proves that adding heat, or energy, can really change a substance.

What's really happening here is now we made the molecules more energetic by adding energy. It's like a little kid on chocolate! So now that the molecule's running all crazy, it breaks off from its liquidy mass and turns into a gas. Cool aye?!

Mini Project 1 - The Incredible Egg Part 2

Well, its been three days! My egg is finally ready.

After rinsing it, I started playing around with it. Check out these photos:

It was a successful lab. I mean, the egg came out really squishy and all. I never knew the egg could turn out that way.

So, more science. The eggshell was dissolved, leaving that inner membrane. As you see, I cut it up and ripped out a bit of that inner membrane. The actual edible part of the egg is still there, although I didn't bother to eat it! Yeah, well, easy cool experiment I suggest you try at home!

Mini Project 1 - The Incredible Egg Part 1

Hey, another chemistry assignment comin' your way!

I decided to make an Incredible Rubber Egg! It's pretty cool, because all you really need is an egg and vinegar. Anyways, the end result should be this really cool egg which has rubber qualities.

The Science?

The vinegar is acidic, "eating" up the calcium carbonate egg shell. The skin, or inner membrane, of the egg is left behind, making it feel very rubbery.

To do it is just three easy steps:

1. Take a hard boiled egg and place it in a glass jar filled with vinegar. Leave it undisturbed for three days.
2. Take the egg out of the vinegar and rinse it off.
3. Play with the egg! Poke it, squeeze it, and maybe even bounce it!

I got a photo of me with my super cool egg as it sits in the vinegar. I'll post again to show you all the results of this amazing experiment.

Field Trip!

View Olson Field Trip in a larger map

So this week, we had this field trip at the Mills Canyon Creek Park. We hiked all the way up there, which was pretty hard. Martinez Drive is really uphill. Then we arrived at the park, which was basically a trail. It was ridiculously long and had some tricky parts to it. Because of the recent rainstorms, it was pretty muddy. The trip wasn't too fun, because of the muddiness and all. Personally, there was nothing interesting in the park. I really didn't get to observe any serious chemistry there.

Man, the hike was so tiring that I didn't do so well in the swim meet against Burlingame High, but it was nice to see my club and swim in my home pool again.

Anyways, I have to elaborate more on my Field Trip. Again, I didn't see much chemistry. I took a lot of pictures of trees and stuff, which weren't too special. Here's a photo of me in the woods! WHOOT.

Nothing Cool This Week

WHOA, what a stupid week for me.

During my school's Arbor Day, all I really could do was serve food at my school's Pancake Breakfast. So, I was up bright and early on a SATURDAY doing this, and I hoped to plant a tree right after. No, the event takes up all my time till noon and I don't get to plant a tree! There goes my one green thing a year. I couldn't even paint a garbage can... c'mon. But the food was good, so I suppose you can say its worth it.

Then, at the Leo's club, I sign up for this Hep B awareness thing. So I personally think it's cool. I don't really know much about Hep B, except for that it affects 1 in 10 Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. So, since it involves me I really should be concerned ehh? Well, I have nothing to do with it right now, except for a team of people who wanna help. Hopefully we'll have something to do soon!

Well, first, I have this PreCal quiz. So its pretty big for me, because my quiz grade is a 79% and I need anything, like even a B, just to move up the 1% and get an A- overall in the grade. Well, I'm sure I did my hyperbola problem completely wrong, so there goes that chance.

Then, in swimming, nothing cool really came out. Todays meet against Aragon, I swam the 200 free and the 100 fly. No Personal Records, and a lot of disappointment for me. Added quite a bit of time today. The pool was nasty too, really dense water - thats a first!

Chem, you can say, was actually fun this week. We melted glass and use those high powered air nozzles for a change.

iProposeWe Make Slime

I propose we make SLIME!

This is part of my chem class today: making up a lab. Whoot!

Making Slime

Materials:

• Borax Powder
• Water
• 4 ounces (120 mL) of Elmer's Glue
• Teaspoon
• Bowl
• Jar or Measuring Cup
• Food Coloring (optional)
• measuring cup

Safety Precautions: Wear Goggles! You are playing with dangerous chemicals. Eating the slime is toxic for you. The slime cleans up easily, just remove the dried slime after soaking it with water. The more you play with the slime, the harder it will get. Store the slime in a plastic bag in the refrigerator to prevent mold from forming.

Procedure:

1. Pour the glue into the jar.
2. Add about half a cup of water into the empty glue bottle and stir.
3. (Optional) Add food coloring.
4. In a separate jar, mix a cup of water with a teaspoon of borax powder.
5. Slowly stir the glue mixture into the borax solution.
6. Put the forming slime into your hand and slowly knead it until it feels dry.

Scientific Purposes:

1. To make and mix solutions and mixtures
2. To make a chemical reaction
3. To observe the weird properties of slime

To see this in action, watch this YouTube video.