September 2 We had our second Lab Experiment on the different forms of mass today, which was experimenting with dry ice. We did this to find the distance between molecules in gas. Pre-Lab/Safety Cautions Beforehand, we were informed on things about dry ice.
Materials
Directions
I didn't really know what to expect from dry ice. Relating it to my background knowledge I knew that once it was put in water, the water would start pouring out with a sort of "vapor". But when it came to the balloon, I had no idea what would happen. I was excited to freely experiment with it after fulfilling the requirements. I didn't know so much about dry ice besides its own use, so I was excited to see how other substances reacted to it. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What Happened? - A Dry Ice Story All my life the only thing I was told about dry ice was "Don't touch it." So at this point I was hesitant to lay my hands on it, even still after confirming it was safe. I was handed the giant chunks of dry ice and I hurriedly ran to my table with them in my hands. My table and I looked in awe as the vapor was coming from it. We all took turns touching it and complaining how cold it was. Immediately, we wanted to start the experiment. Knowing that we couldn't put the whole boulder in the beaker, we got a steel ruler and smashed the huge chunk into smaller around 2-3 cm pieces. We hurriedly dropped one of the pieces into the water. Watching as it sunk to the bottom and released vapor from the top of the beaker. We then continued and started the second experiment. Melany got a ruler and totally smashed all the dry ice into 1-3 cm pieces. We used a 2.5 cm chunk of dry ice to be put in the balloon. We then opened the balloon and placed the dry ice inside. We tied it up and then Sammie started shaking it to slowly melt the ice. We then moved onto other experiments. (We were free now) Andrew had shown his bubble mix that he created, we eager to try it before other groups. We were given it and we were aiming to blow one bubble onto the beaker of water and dry ice to create a larger bubble. Ash blew a little bubble onto the beaker and we all squealed as it began to grow larger. All of leaned in as the bubble grew on the rim of the beaker. The bubble grew because of the vapor being released from the dry ice and water. After the bubble grew large enough, it popped and all the vapor gushed out. We then eagerly tried it again. This time we blew a bigger bubble, and we noticed that the bubble was staying longer onto the beaker. It didn't seem like bubble would pop anytime soon, so we popped the bubble ourselves. We then took a beaker filled with bubble soap and we placed a chunk of dry ice into it. We happily watched as multiple bubbles came pouring out of the beaker instead of the usual vapor. Afterwards, Ash and I had the same idea. We grabbed a huge beaker from the shelf and filled it 1/8 with water. We grabbed the whole beaker of bubble soap and poured all of into the beaker of water. Immediately, bubbles began to grow. We threw in more dry ice and the bubbles grew bigger and began to fill up the beaker faster. We all panicked as it began to pour out of the beaker, running to get paper towels and a glass container to place the beaker in. My group members then grabbed food coloring, wanting to turn the bubbles green. They eagerly poured some food coloring into the beaker waiting for green bubbles to come out, but sadly it didn't Even if the source of the liquid was green, it had no effect on the dry ice and the vapor/bubbles being released from it. The green food coloring just made an even bigger mess. We then checked back on the balloon we had filled with a 1-2 cm dry ice. To our surprise it became around 7.2 inches! I feel like if the dry ice was any bigger, the balloon would have exploded. Our last experiment was getting a beaker of water and dry ice and putting a balloon over the rim of it (the opening). The balloon inflated quickly as the fog released was going inside of it. But late we were told to take it off for it might have exploded. Overall the experience was fun and I learned a lot more about dry ice. Although I half burned myself with it, I am encouraged to learn a lot more about it.
What I learned? Noticed?
Experiment Key Experiment One - Placing dry ice into a beaker filled with H20 (water) Experiment Two - Placing a 1cm piece of dry ice into a balloon Experiment Three - Blowing a bubble onto a beaker filled with dry ice and water Experiment Four - Placing a piece of dry ice in a bubble soap mix Experiment Five - Placing a large amount of dry ice into a huge beaker filled with water and a large amount of bubble soap Experiment Six - Food coloring the water Experiment Seven - Placing a balloon over a beaker filled with dry ice and water Group Contributions: I contributed to the group by taking pictures, helping clean up, starting new experiments, and sharing ideas and thought on how things worked. I worked in a group with Kazuha, Ash, Natalie, Melany, and Sammie. We worked together and did different experiments at the same time, documenting all of it to be shared and emailed to each other later. Things I would do differently? I don't think we could've done it any better differently. Since it was an experiment, it was expected that we would do things that wouldn't work. It was all about exploring and I don't regret doing things like putting the food coloring into the beaker, we just learned a lot more from making those mistakes. What was enjoyed? What wasn't? I enjoyed messing around with the so called "forbidden to touch" dry ice from my childhood. I was originally scared of touching dry ice but I was glad to overcome that fear. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to mess around to make our own experiments after doing the requirements. I enjoyed looking back on it and trying to decipher how things happened and the reason for them. For me, there wasn't necessarily an area of the exam that I disliked. It was messy, but it was a lab so I didn't expect it to be very clean. I enjoyed getting my hands dirty and doing like pretty much whatever I wanted with the dry ice without being told "No you can't do that." or "No that will never work" I overall really enjoyed the lab and I felt good to be able to do whatever I wanted with the experiment without having someone shooting down my ideas. I had no limits when doing this experiment.
1 Comment
Andrew
7/9/2015 18:26:40
Annika, your reporting is exceptional. Great work. I really like how you lead through the story of your experimentation with pictures and videos. It makes it engaging and easy to follow along. It'd be interesting to know what you enjoyed, didn't enjoy, etc.
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