Last Meal Conversion Project Reflection

This project was really fun especially because food was involved! I think it  really played a big part in helping me understand the conversions and was great practice for the test. At first I thought it would be hard to memorize all the conversions but after having to use it so many times for this project, it became more easy to remember the exact measurements. It was also good practice for the rounding portion of this unit, which I really struggled with for a while but doing this project served as great practice. I'm glad we had this project actually because it was a nice cool off after the stressful unit test and it helped me review for the test as well! It was also interesting seeing what everyone else had made and all the recipes were so good it was hard picking who to give extra credit points to! I also had a fun time making my Oreo Pound cake!

Chapter 5

Accuracy vs Precision

http://www.uh.edu/engines/accurate-precise.jpg

Significant figures are digits with meaning contributing to its measurement resolution

Rounding: 

• you can estimate past the calibration of the measuring device
• example: round 0.1653 to the 0.001 place (answer: 0.165)

Significant Figures Rules: 

• zeros for "cosmetic" purposes are NOT significant
• zeros used to locate the decimal point is NOT significant
• Any numbers between 1 and 9 ARE significant 
• All zeros between non zero integers ARE significant
• zeros at the end of the decimal value ARE significant because it shows where you can round and the accuracy of the number (also where the measurement device is calibrated)
• all numbers in scientific notation ARE significant 

Addition and Subtraction: 

• the number of significant figures in the sum or difference are the same as the measurement with the smallest number of decimal places

Multiplication and Division: 

• the number of significant figures in the product is the same as the measurement with the least significant figures

Order of Operations:

• same as in math
• Parenthesis
• Exponents
• Multiplication
• Division
• Addition
• Subtraction

Metric Conversions: 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_IYAFI7j7o2vXSq-8-zWeF7IsypN1dcuWMVIAKe1I9OZwsgfuVLudyYQcChG1SM2TEYwVcoqM79RatSJaCtE1Aj17FGwJTZmIQABSBSB9_pAWQipCLXExEx-O9XuN6pEQ6VCIuRE5-FE/s400/units+king+henry+died+drinking+chocolate+milk.png

Helpful Links: 

• http://www.usca.edu/chemistry/genchem/sigfig.htm
• http://chemistry.bd.psu.edu/jircitano/sigfigs.html
• http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryquickreview/a/accuracyprecise.htm

Practice: 

• http://www.dallassd.com/our%20schools/high%20School/Chemsite/chem/hotpot/sf.htm
• http://www.chemistrywithmsdana.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SigFig.html
• Bookwork: pg 164 #1-34

Mole Day

Making the mole was a lot of fun because we were free to make it however we wanted and had minimal restrictions. This project was also less stressful and a nice reliever from the other projects. I think making the mole and having the mole day celebration helps us remember the significance in chemistry. I'll probably remember chemistry every time I see a mole or when the topic arises now. It was also fun seeing all the other moles and seeing all the creative ideas other people had. The party was fun too because it was a nice ending to the week and a nice reliever before the quiz Monday.

https://dj1hlxw0wr920.cloudfront.net/userfiles/wyzfiles/fdb688ae-ebf3-406f-adc0-879dc144e389.gif

At first I was confused as to why we were making a mole, but this link summed it up for me and it started to make more sense! 

Unit 3 Pre-test

I feel like there were some things in this pre-test that we already knew from previous classes. For example, measuring lengths and reading graduated cylinders. But I also think some questions were new but we could easily learn because they build on prior knowledge that we already have. I also struggled a little in remembering the answers for the review questions so I definitely have to go back and review so that I don't forget. I think my memory was probably rough from the break so I need to go back and simply review my notes. This unit seems pretty short and I hope I do well this unit so I can help my grade.

Unit Test Reflection

Overall I think the unit test wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy but it wasn't too bad. The night before the test, I started working on the guided readings while reading Unit 3 and 19 in the text book. When I got to Chapter 19 I realized we hadn't covered some of the topics in class and I panicked. So I thoroughly read the chapter and took the practice assessments in the schoology test prep link. Thankfully there wasn't much of Chapter 19.2 on the test but I'm really glad I read it because it gave me a better understanding of the topic as a whole. Since a lot of chemistry is linked together and knowledge that you acquire is often used in later topics; I think that having done all that will definitely help me in the long run. After I had read the chapter, I went through all the practice tests on schoology and I'm REALLY glad I did that because I found that the questions on the test had similar formats which gave me a feel for what I would be seeing. After doing the tests, I marked which problems I had trouble with and went back and reviewed that in our notes and the textbook. I really like doing practice problems before tests because I have noticed that it helps me a lot. As they say, practice makes permanent; and perfect practice makes perfect. (and that's the goal)

Star log reflection

The star log project was actually very cool and I enjoyed it a lot because astronomy has always been interesting to me. I think I even wanted to be an astronomer at one point in my life. I also think that this project was a lot less stressful than the Frontier Chemistry project because I think the first project prepared us for this one. (I'm also pretty glad we don't have to do an essay for this one) I think the information was a lot easier to find and there was less stuff we had to find. I also like how we got to pick which stars we wanted to research, I think it made it a little more exciting and unique. I think I did a better job of managing my time for this project, however if I could improve I would see if it were possible to find further information about the chemical composition of each star. I used the Harvard research base for a lot of my research but it was difficult to read through the abstracts and understand the terms that they used sometimes.


Some other useful links for this project: 
http://www.umop.net/spctelem.htm
THIS one is my personal favorite because they made easy to read charts with most of the information I needed
I also used Wikipedia a lot for background information about stars and constellations