STRESS this week. This week I had a lot of homework. I did not go to swim practice this whole week. Also, the pool heater broke, so we would have to go to San Mateo High School. Today, I had six tests in seven classes. Next week is finals week. I have to study very hard. In chemistry, I saw a video about mole, which is Amadeo Avagrado's number. It was a song sang by Mr. Olson and Mr. Washington. Mr. Washington was a physics teacher at Mills. Mole is 6.02 x 10^23 atoms. The molar mass is on the periodic table. It is the atomic mass of the isotopes of elements. I learned how to convert moles to number of atoms to grams. Dead week is not dead because I learned a lot during this week.

Week of 11/30/09

This week we have a chemistry test. We are tested on a lot of material. We need to know the three types of chemical bonds and electronegativity. I learned a lot about polar covalent bonds. I learned about the properties of ionic compounds. I learned about two types of alloys and diferent ways to prepare metal for use. We have to memorize the seven diatomic elements, BR2I2Cl2H2O2F2. We also have to memorize the seven polyatomic ions and their formulas. I learned how to draw Lewis Dot Structures. We have to know the octet rule and the number of valence electrons. There is a HONC 1234 rule and the VSEPR theory. We need to know the first ten alkanes. There are isomers. This week, we learned about the polar bonds and the requirements for a polar molecule. Today, we did a lab. Different liquids were pour through a tube and we used the charged wand to see if the liquid would be attracted to the wand. we charged the wand by rubbing it with wool. It was pretty cool. I learned from the Polar Bears and Penguins comic book.

Week of 11/24/09

It was a short 3-day week for school. I had two big tests on Wednesday which was pretty hard. On Thursday, it was Thanksgiving. my family and I went to Boreal, near Tahoe. My sister and I went snowboarding, while my brother went skiing. It was my sister and my second time snowboarding. I fell many times, so on the next day my right side of my butt hurt. My right arm was sore because I always had to lift myself up after falling. There were many obstacles when I was going down the hill. Boreal closed at 4:00 P.M. Overall, it was pretty good. On Friday, my sister, my brother, and I went to the Dickens Fair at Cow Palace. Well, actually, we went with the GATE club. It was pretty fun. We bought frosted nuts (almonds covered in cinnamon). I liked how there were characters from Charles Dickens' novels. I saw a few performances, but I liked the Illusionist the best. On Saturday and Sunday, I had to do all of my homework. i had a lot of homework. It was a busy weekend for me.

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.

Week of 10/19/09

This week was one of the best weeks of school. In chemistry, we did a lab with flames on Wednesday. We put a metal loop into different solutions of chloride and burned it in a flame. There were many different-colored flames. My favorite colored flame was a pinkish purple flame. It burned for a long time. Some other flames did not burn as long. This lab was one of the funnest lab. After we burned the specific flames, we got six other mystery solutions. We had to guess which solution we thought the flame would be from. Yesterday, I saw some glow in the dark thing after the light went through the filters. I learned about the electromagnetic spectrum. I learned that there were different wave properties like the frequency, wavelength, and energy. All lights had the same speed. The infrared light video was very cool. Night vision was interesting. We also finished the Einstein video.

Week of 10/12/09

This week was overall not as stressful. For chemistry, we watched more of the movie. I liked this movie. It was great on how the movie taught us all of the history behind each part of the equation. I thought Albert Einstein had an odd mind because he could connect energy with mass and the speed of light. I did not like how Einstein left his first wife and married his cousin. He was not loyal and only cared about his fame. I think marrying your cousin is diagusting. In class, we also did a lot of practice on alpha and beta radiation equations. I discovered that I always made many careless mistakes on these equations. I need to be more careful when I fill in the equation. I also learned about using C-14 to find out how old something is. I found this pretty interesting.

Week of 9/21/09

This week, we did a worksheet and handout called Life on the Edge. We learned about valence electrons and the shells of elements. There were also electrons called core electrons. We learned about trends in the periodic table like the sizes of atoms and ions, electronegativity, and ionization energy. the Ionization Energy is the emount of energy needed to remove an electron. Electron-greeiness is Electronegativity. This Friday, we will have a Unit 1 Test. I hope I do well. Also, today we saw sublimation from dry ice. the experiments we did were very cool. We saw bubbles form. What I thought that was the coolest was when the bubbles floated in the aquarium because the dry ice gave off carbon dioxide, so the bubbles were hovering over the ice. Today was a fun day.

What A Stressful Week!!!

This week, I was loaded with homework. Well, anyways, for chemistry, we did many pages of worksheets. We learned many things about the periodic table. We discovered many trends in the periodic table. We learned that the elements with similar properties belonged to the same family (column). From the top to the bottom, the atomic size and mass increases. From left to right, the atomic mass increases. The Alkaline and Alkaline Earth Metals were very reactive. The Noble gases do not react. I also learned how ions were formed, either by adding or taking away electrons. The Group 1, 2, and 13 elements tend to form positive ions or cations. The elements in Groups 6 and 7 tend to form negative ions or anions. I learned how to write different isotopes with a special notation. We also have to do a webpage about a particular element. My element is Manganese (Mn). MN is my initials, so I chose manganese.

Week of 9/7/09

This week, we had a short week because of the labor day weekend. We did not have school on Monday. We have back-to-school night tonight. We have minimum day tomorrow, on Friday. Yesterday, we used placed the element cards into a table-like structure. We had to find similarities and differences in the elements. We had to sing the "How I Convert" song. We had a lot of fun. We were recorded onto a music video. Today, in the beginning of class, we watched the music video, it was a combination of all of Mr.Olson's classes. It was very funny. Later, we sang the song "Milli Meter and her Nine Brothers". This song sounded very sad. It was for memorizing that 10 milimeters were in a centimeter. Later, we started "Breaking the Code", we had to answer the questions about the periodic table we made yesterday. I can't wait till tomorrow, minimum day!!!

Chem lab: Density & Chem lab: Elements &Compounds

This week, we did a lab on density. We used the same one formula to solve for the mass and the volume. We measured solid rectangular objects. We also measured the volume of liquids. We did another lab this week. It was the Element and Compounds. We broke down a compound into its elements and we formed a compound from two elements. The first part, we broke down the compound water into two elements hydrogen and oxygen. We mixed a universal indicator, a pinch of salt, and a half dish of water. We had to attach pencil lead to each of the two alligator clips on the 9-volt battery cap. We saw a reaction. The pencil lead on the black end made the solution turn purple; this element was oxygen. The pencil lead on the red end made the solution turn into a vanilla color; this was hydrogen. I saw bubbles at both ends of the lead, but I saw more bubbles at the red end. The balanced chemical reaction was 2 H2O ---> 2 H2 + O2 . For part 2, we formed a compound from two elements. In this part of the lab, we had to wear on goggles. We lit a candle and held a small piece of steel wool with crucible tongs into the flame of the candle. There was a cool chemical reaction. I saw yellow-orange sparks fly from the wool. The iron reacted with oxygen from the air. The sparks flew very quickly. There were silvery blue balls on the tips of the wool after it reacted. The name of the compound that formed from iron and oxygen was iron oxide, FeO. I liked this reaction better. There was more to see.

Matter

This week, we learned about what a matter was. We had to sort things into groups called: matter, not a matter, and unsure. Matter has mass and takes up space. Wind is the movement of molecules so it is not a matter. We did a lab about measurement in chemistry. We had to guess the mass of several items. Then, we had to measure the actual mass of the object with a balance beam. I learned how to use the Vernier Scale on the balance beam. The Vernier Scale allowed us to measure up to the 1/100 of a gram. In the lab, we also had to predict the volume of liquids; this task was a little harder. Next, we measured the liquids using a graduated cylinder. The plastic cup's actual water capacity was not as accurate because I kept spilling water of of the cup when I was pouring it into the graduated cylinder. I learned how to calculate the percent error. Some of my predictions were very inaccurate. From reading the chemistry book, I learned about the scientific method and saw examples of how to use this method.

Penny Lab

Yesterday in Chemistry class, we did a penny lab. We turned a copper penny into a golden color. First, we placed the penny into the melted zinc. Th penny turned into a silver color. I brought a very dirty penny to class and it seemed to come out like it was cleaned naturally. I barely had to wash my penny. There was some chemical reaction. I don't think I made real gold. I think only the color was changed. I liked this experiment because there was some chemical reaction. This fun part of the lab was putting the silver penny into the fire and watching the penny turn into the golden color. I think it would be cool to see the penny crumble, but you had to put the penny in the fire longer. I wonder if it is possible to change the golden penny back into a copper-colored penny. This lab was overall interesting.

Goals, Passions

In life, I have many goals, some of them are short-term goals and others are long term goals. I want to become a bone doctor. In order to accomplish that, I have many other goals to accomplish. I need to get into a good college or medical school. To become a doctor, I have to earn a PhD. For now, I want to pass my Grade 8 Piano Test and to earn a diploma for piano. I also want to be able to swim in the Junior Olympics. In the future, I want to travel around the whole world. I want to visit the places that I have never gone to before. Another goal is that I want to go to Yellowstone National Park with my sister and dad. We plan to bring all of our tools to look for animals. My dad, sister, and I are very interested in nature, and we are not afraid of much heights. These are my goals and passions. I know I will have more goals as my life goes on.