So recently in science we just finished our chemistry unit. Man was it a big unit, it took us from late 1st term all the way to the end of the 2nd term to go over everything. We did various worksheets, activities, experiments, and of course a project.

To start of the unit we looked back at some of the things we had learned last year. We reviewed the basics such as the periodic table and Bohr Models.

We then moved on to how to do chemical equations. These didn’t start off to hard but after awhile we had to start learning how to balance equations to make surer there were the same amount of molecules on each side. We started off doing these in the textbook however raj out of stuff to do in there so we moved on to some other questions online. The next big thing that got covered in the unit was the difference between acids and bases. If you didn’t know acids are compounds that “donate” hydrogen ions (H+). A base will accept a proton from any type of atom.

After learning about the different types of compounds we got a chance to do a few experiments. These experiments weren’t super amazing but they were cool and fun to do.

After we had doing these experiments we were given the choice of 2 different projects. One of them being a reaction, the other a video. In the reaction project you had to research a chemical reaction of your choice and present the reaction infront of the class. For the video project you had to do similar research to the reaction but instead of presenting the reaction you would make a video about it. Both were partner projects and would be done with the person sitting next to you in the seating arrangement so I was with Sofia. We decided to do the reaction project as we thought it would be a bit more fun to do the reaction ourselves.

The reaction we decided to do after some intense research on the Crazy Russian Hacker youtube page, we decided to do Elephant Toothpaste. We thought it looked like a very fun reaction to do that wasn’t way too dangerous and was possible to do at the school. However our project had to have a testable question to it so we used “How can we test for oxygen in the product of Elephant Toothpaste?”  The way we used this question in our reaction was, we lit a toothpick on fire, blew it out, then stuck it into the product, and when it came out it was burning again. Heres the video of the experiment:

Overall I had a lot of fun in this unit as I like chemistry. I’m also a big fan of doing reactions as it’s a lot of fun for me to make something happen with just a couple of things to begin with. I also feel like I’ve learnt a lot about the subject of chemistry, and I’m excited to take chemistry next year.