Monday, May 9, 2016

The Airbag Lab Results

This was without doubt, the most stressful lab I have ever done. I am almost had a heart attack before I inflated my bag. As you probably read in my post below, we had to write our own procedure from scratch for this lab. I had a pretty good procedure so I got into the lab today. After we got in, I started doing the calculations as I needed to know how much of each substance to use. This was the part of time where I made a crucial mistake. Because I didn't want to explode my bag with too much gas, I only decided to fill the bag up with 90% of the volume that I found. This was a group decision made by my group of friends as we talked it over a couple of times. This cost the lab for some of us. We had under-inflated the bag and were close to failing the lab. I barely passed, but I feel bad for those in my group that didn't pass. I don't know if it is too much to ask, but I would like for them to get a redo on the experiment, or some other way to make up for what is done. I am only saying this because this lab was crucial for some of us. Other than that, today was a decently fun day. I had some insane luck today. Probably because I prayed to Shiva the previous night.

Dylan, just chillin'

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Web Resources for the Gas Laws Unit

These are a couple of the web resources that I used to prepare for the quiz. They could also be used to prepare for the unit test. Hopefully you will like these links.

1. Boyle's Law -  This is a video that teaches and shows how Boyle's law works.
2. Charles Law - This is a quick lesson that explains Charles law and shows a practice problem.
3. Avogadro's Law - This is also a quick lesson that explains and shows how Avogadro's law works.
4. Ideal Gas Law - This contains a simulation of how the ideal gas law works.
5. Practice problems for Boyle's Law - This contains practice problems for Boyle's law.
6. Combined Gas law practice - This contains a few combined gas law practice problems.

I really hope these links were useful to you. I wish you good luck on the airbag lab and the unit test.

The Ideal Gas Law and preparing for the Airbag Lab

On Friday, we learned about the ideal gas law. I learned that every gas law that we are learning about in class is about an ideal gas. I also learned that real gases react unpredictably. We learned about the ideal gas law formula and how to use that in questions. Most of the times, this law is used to find a medium that allows us to find the answer.  These practice questions didn't seem too hard, but these questions on the test are what are hard. This is the ideal gas law formula:

After lecture, we talked about the most interesting lab ever, the inflate an airbag lab. In this lab, we have to write our own procedure and we don't know anything about the size of the bag or the amount of stuff we need to use to inflate the bag. I think I have the procedure down already but I am really stressed. This lab is a pass or fail lab and is worth 20 points. I have to get a 100 percent on this or I am gonna have to take my exempted final. GOD, wish me luck.

Gas Laws Quiz

This quiz was honestly not that hard. I don't exactly know how to explain it, but I didn't think it was that hard. All it was was the different gas laws and questions relating to that. The test had a lot of conceptual questions. The math part was the easy part of the test. It was 20 questions, and that took a toll on me. I missed 4 questions and that really endangered my grade. However, since it was a quiz, it really didn't affect my grade that much. I still need to see what I got wrong as that will help me prepare for the unit test. This test determines whether or not I will take the final. I need all the luck in the world for the next week.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Boyle's and Charles' Law Lecture

Today and yesterday, we learned about gas, and its laws. We also learned about the names of the guys who created these gas laws. The first one we learned about was Boyle's law. In Boyle's law, temperature and amount are constant. Boyle's law tells us that temperature and volume hold an inverse relationship. We also learned about the units of pressure and the relationship between the units and its conversions. We use these conversion factors in the problems. The practice problems seemed fairly easy. Then again, practice problems are always easy. The ones on the tests are the really hard ones. Charles's Law tells us that temperature and volume vary directly with each other. Also Charles' law requires gas temperature to be in Kelvin. Problems related to Charles' laws are also fairly easy. Apparently, the lecture and problems will get harder starting from Monday.