Week 3 Reflection

        This week, my SG Chemistry 2 class explored a variety of concepts that helped us to further expand our knowledge on the subject. On Monday and Tuesday, we completed and discussed a worksheet on Avogadro's Hypothesis. To start, we had to look at a picture of two containers of gas particles held at the same temperature, volume, and pressure and come up with a conclusion about the number of gas particles each container held. Because the pressure, temperature, and volume were all constant, we were able to conclude that each container must hold the same number of gas particles. This was the same conclusion Avogadro came to long ago, making it possible to deduce the formulas of compounds formed when these gases react. For the next part of the worksheet, we had to draw representations of hydrogen and oxygen particles and react them together to form water molecules with no gas left over. Since two volumes of hydrogen react with one volume of oxygen to form water, we knew we had to draw twice as many hydrogen particles as oxygen. Our final product had two molecules of hydrogen attached to one volume of oxygen and we called it H20. We followed this process to react different molecules together in the next problems, and these were our results:

For the final part of the worksheet, we learned that occasionally, one volume of gas can react with another volume of gas to produce two volumes of a gaseous product. Avogadro came to the conclusion that when this occurs, the molecules of some gaseous elements must contain two atoms as opposed to only one. In the following problems, we had to draw representations of multiple volumes reactions of gases, and these are the results we came up with: 

        On Wednesday, we completed an online activity to further our understanding of reactants and their products. After measuring the mass and volume of various substances before and after they were heated or burned, we were able to come up with three main ideas. The first idea is that some substances are composed of discrete amounts of two or more other substances. This means that elements react in defined proportions to create a product. Our second main idea is that the total mass of the products of a chemical reaction is exactly equal to the mass of the reactants. This means that mass is never created or destroyed during the process. Our final idea is that elements combine in specific, defined ratios during chemical reactions. All three of these concepts helped us to further comprehend the process of chemical reactions and the behaviors of the reactants throughout the procedure.
        On Friday, our class started a worksheet on compounds and different hypotheses. My group found the ratios of the element's masses easily, but had a hard time sketching the particle diagrams. We brainstormed our ideas until we came to a consensus and then drew our thoughts on the white board. As a class, we then discussed the first part of the worksheet and my group edited our answers after listening to what everyone else had to say.