Week of 11/16/09

This week my younger brother went to Outdoor Ed, so at home, it was very quiet. I could concentrate on my homework. Also, I got to move into my new room. I was waiting for a very long time until my dad finally painted it on Sunday. Now, my sister's room looked very big. My room looked a little crowded. I like my new room, except that I still cannot use my bookshelf because it did not fit right. My room color is monet moonrise. It is a calm color. I do not have to sleep on a bunk bed anymore. I do not have to climb up the ladder every night now. I cannot wait till I get my bookshelf so that everything downstairs could go into my room and the family room would not be as messy. This Wednesday, I got my first pair of invisalign. It hurt more than I thought because I thought braces hurt more. I am getting used to them. It was hard to chew hard items, or it would hurt my teeth. I have one more set of upper invisalign than my lower invisalign. In chemistry, we learned how to draw Lewis Dot structures. We learned the HONC 1234 rule. It was pretty interesting. Carbon chemistry is "Organic Chemistry." I learned about VSEPR theory. We built structures of different formulas. Some many exciting events happened this week!

Week of 11/9/09

This week was one of the best weeks in school. It was pretty relaxing. It was not very stressful. I did not have a ton of homework. I also got many hours of sleep this week. Veterans Day was on Wednesday. On this day, my family and I went to Mayflower Restaurant. We have not been eating dim sum there for a long time. There was great food but my sister ordered too much food, so I got very full. Anyways, in chemistry, we learned about alloys. Alloys are mixtures of metal atoms. There were two different types of alloys, substitutional alloy and interstitial alloy. Also we did a lab and learned how to hand metals in different ways. In the lab, we did annealing, hardening, and tempering. In the lab, we saw metal turn into liquid and turn back into solid. It solidified very quickly. I poked the metal. It was very cool, like a blob. We learned how to name Type III Binary Compounds or covalent compounds. It was a great week!!!

You Light Up of My Life and Bonds

Yesterday, we did a lab with conductivity. I made predictions on whether I thought each substance would conduct electricity. Most of my predictions were correct. When ionic compounds were tested, they did not conduct electricity. When we dissolved them in water, they conducted electricity. Both of the metals aluminum and copper conducted electricity. Covalently bonded compounds do not conduct electricity. We learned about different types of bond and their properties. The new type of bond that I learned was molecular covalent. They form between two nonmetals. They do not conduct electricity and tend to be liquids and gases or softer solids. Tomorrow we have a test on light, ions, and bond types.

Light, Ions, and Bond Types

This week, we used google docs to make three different graphs for the chemistry lab: Visible Spectrum of Chemical Solutions. Using google docs made it more convenient to make graphs. I did not have to deal with plotting points. I could easily make lines by entering the data. I also learned how to make a pie chart. I learned how to make a pie chart with even pieces. We had to enter a one next to each color. Using google docs is also very cool because I could go on google docs where ever I go. I just need to remember my username and password. I learned how to read my line graph. I glued a light spectrum at the bottom of my graph. This helped me to analyze the graph. I learned that the peak wavelength of a color was on the opposite end of the color wheel. Light is very interesting.