Today in class, we talked about hazardous materials. Hazardous materials are substances that pose a danger to the health and safety of living organisms. We watched a short video about a hazardous materials (Hazmat) Team taking steps to safely identifying a substance in an abandoned barrel. Our challenge today was to figure out how unidentified materials should be handled. The big question: how do we identify unknown materials?

There is nothing more important in science labs than safety! Today we talked about ways we keep ourselves safe in the lab.

There are 10 categories of hazardous materials. These include explosive, gas, radioactive, biohazard etc. But in this section, we are going to focus on the three most common: Corrosive, Toxic, and Flammable. We know that we cannot determine the composition of a substance based only on observations, but observations are a great place to start! Today we took a look at the substance we'll be identifying this unit and saw what we could see! The big question: What makes up the mixture?

There are many scientific tools we use. Today, we played a game to name laboratory equipment and talked about their uses

Procedure writing is all about details! If you were to write a procedure to make a sandwich, most people wouldn't think to list a step telling the person to open the bag to get the bred out, but without that step, you cannot make the sandwich! Follow our 8 rules of writing procedures when you write your procedure to separate our mixtures!

Sound the alarm! We're fighting the clock to get our lab activites done! With so much to do, 42 minutes can sneek up on you. Today, we talked about opening and closing procdures to make the most of your time in lab. Keep calm, this is only a drill, on lab drill day!

Homework 2/29:

1. Pg. 11: Activity #5 - Separating the Mixture, Analysis Questions

Due in class:

1. What's Hazardous at Home?

We've separated out mixture into its components, now what? We have 6 unknown substances, so our work is not done yet! Today we're going to run test on our liquids to see if our unknown liquids are toxic, corrosive. These are called properties, namely chemical properties. Properties help us identify matter! We'll talk about that more tomorrow... As for today, happy  sciencing!

Today, we took a break from our lab work and took a look at Chemical and Physical, Properties & Changes. A physical property is a characteristic are measurable. Characteristics like mass, length, volume.... these characteristics can be observed without changing the substance. Chemical properties are observable as well. However, they're only observable after a chemical reaction. After the chemical reaction, the substance is changed into something else. To identify if a property is chemical or physical, ask "can the property be observed without changing the identity of the substance?" If the answer is yes-- it's a physical property. If the answer is no-- it's a chemical property. 

Properties are properties... they're characteristic that something has. I'm tall, I have brown hair, I'm 6 feet and 4 inches tall. Those are some of my physical properties. My chemical properties, are a little harder too observe. I'm not flammable, I have some reactive properties but we're not going to get into that! The point is, properties are one thing, changes are another. In a physical change, the change does not change the substance's identity. No new substance formed during a physical change. My identity is Mr. K, Kinger, Nick.. that's me. if I ball up, I'm still me, my identity didn't change, just my shape. In a chemical change, the result is a new substance. Chemical changes, change the identity of the substance. If I was to jump into a tub of hydrochloric acid, I would chemically change. I would no longer be Mr. K. If you're trying to figure out if the change is chemical or physical. Ask the golden question. Is the change reversible? If the change is reversible, say, water freezing into ice. We can get the original substance (liquid water) back. A chemical change requires a chemical reaction. Like cooking an egg. once it's cooked, you can't uncook it! That's a chemical change; a new substance formed!

Today, we had two speaker from the engineering company, Aesynt. They introduced us to the world of engineering. Everything we use -- cars, phones, bridges... were designed and created by engineers. Every problem we run into, engineers work on. When you do homework, and are solving problems, you are a homework engineer! 

A graduated cylinder is used to measure the volume of liquids. It's called a graduated cylinder because each of the markings are called graduations. These graduations show measurements of volume, usually in milliliters (mL). To read a graduated cylinder you have to get low! Make sure you're at eye-level with the liquid you're measuring. Be sure you know the values of the graduations as well! Today, we started or measuring volume lab activity where we're finding the volumes of some regularly shaped objects using two different methods of finding volume. Measurements and calculations, as well as, water displacement. 

Today we worked on methods to measure volume. Remember that volume is the amount of space an object occupies. We can measure volume by measuring the dimensions of an object and calculating the volume using a formula. Or by using the water displacement method. Water displacement is use to see how much water an object moves. The amount of water an object moves is equal to the volume of that object.