We have just finished up our chemistry unit in grade 10 science. Science 10s goal is to prepare you for any science 11 courses you might take. I for one am still undecided on whether or not I will be taking Chem 11.

In grade 9 we touched on chemistry but we didn’t get into any of the complicated aspects of it. The majority of our learning was focused on the periodic table as well as the basics of Bohr Diagrams.

At the start of our grade 10 chemistry unit, we had a small refresher around what we learned in grade 9. Though this unit did have aspects of periodic table memorization and  Bohr Diagram usage, its main focus was on chemical reactions and creating a scientific lab experiment. This involved creating a Hypothesis’, procedures, equations, etc.. This was all a build-up to our end of unit project.

Our project was to create a scientific lab experiment as well as synthesize a scientific write-up to go with it.

However, we didn’t just do science labs. We also did a lot of textbook work. This taught us about chemical equation format, balancing chemical equations, and Lewis Diagrams, to name a few.

At the end of our unit, we created a mind map to show off the knowledge we gathered through this unit. You can see mine here.

As I’ve mentioned, our end of unit project was to create a scientific lab experiment. We did this in groups of two. My partner, Ried, and I couldn’t decide on what experiment to do for our project. Unfortunately, once we did, Ried got sick and was unable to come to school for a few weeks. Though there were some challenges, we still managed to complete our project on time, even if it was not as built-out as we’d would have liked.

For our project, we tested sucrose sugar for carbon. This was a very simple experiment. We took a beaker of sucrose and poured in some concentrated sulphuric acid.

The mixture was then stirred until it turned black. If the sugar had carbon, the H2SO4 would absorb all the hydrogen and oxygen in the sugar and leave behind only carbon. Due to the release of all the hydrogen and oxygen, the carbon left behind expanded and became a fluffy back tube.

This was a cool project. However, I would have liked to have come up with our idea sooner so we would have had more time to work on it. I’ll work on that for the future.