Blog #4

This unit on chemical equations has been my favorite so far this year. The beginning of the unit, with nothing but balancing chemical equations, was incredibly easy. It's so weird to be able to grasp something so quickly in this class, which is a tad depressing to say. After everyone had at least a basic grasp on balancing equations, we moved on to predicting the outcome of chemical reactions and identifying the type of reaction. For this, we did an experiment where we mixed chemicals and had to identify the product. It was definitely more fun than some of the experiments we've done this year, and it was really cool to see how different chemicals combined.  This wasn't very difficult, although the homework assignment on this did require a bit of flipping around in my notebook to make sure I'm identifying the equation correctly. In addition to this, I still needed to doublecheck the charges on a lot of elements and compounds. I'm learning them, though. The final thing we tacked on to this unit was the LOLOL energy charts. I'm still not too confident with this, and am having flashbacks to earlier in the school year. However, I should be able to do it with a little more practice. I can identify how the energy flow works, and I count that as a tiny success. I can't remember where it fit into my chronological list of this unit, but we also talked about the reactivity of different metals. It makes a lot of sense for some metals to be more reactive than others, since I don't think a lot would happen if they were all equally reactive. In conclusion, I like this unit a lot, and will be kind of sad when it's over.

An example of a balanced chemical equation. This is a combustion reaction, since the hydrocarbon reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water.

I found this on Google Images as an example of a single replacement reaction and it made me laugh.