Whenever one pompom was pulled down, you could pull any pompom and the hanging pompom would rise. For example, if the green pompom was hanging down, you could pull the yellow, blue, or red pompom and the green one would get pulled back to the tube.
In our groups, we wrote on whiteboards what we thought was going on inside the tube. Our group thought that the yellow and blue pompoms were connected, and the green and red were connected. The string we thought connected the yellow and blue pompoms would loop around the green and red string once in the middle. That way, pulling on any pompom could potentially affect any of the other pompoms.
When Dr. Finnan pulled apart the tube, no strings were connected. My theory is that he used magnets. Instead of the two strings looping around each other, the two strings each had three ends; two connected to the two pompoms and one with a magnet on the end. When you're pulling on the pompoms, the magnets often come together in the middle, but when Dr. Finnan pulled apart the tube, they had been separated. That was a cool intro to Chemistry.
Next was the flaming paint can. Dr. Finnan filled a paint can with methane. The can had two holes in it: one on the top, and one on the side. Right after filling the can, he covered the holes with tape, and set it down in the middle of the room. Next, he removed the tape, and lit the methane coming out of the top of the can. The fire went for a while, and after a minute or two, the can exploded and the cap flew off. Here's a video:
In our groups on our whiteboards, we drew what we thought the particles looked like before and after the explosion. We explained how the can was filled with methane at first, then right before the explosion it was filled with a mix of oxygen and methane, and then after the explosion the can is filled with oxygen because the methane, which is lighter than air, rises out of the can. This is pretty much what everyone else thought, too.
Our most recent experiment was a mass experiment. It had six stations. At the first station, we documented the mass of a piece of steel wool before and after we pulled it apart. The steel wool lost 0.2 grams, but that was only because we lost some of the material while we pulled it apart. Here's a diagram of what happened:
At station number 2, we measured the mass of steel wool, held it over a torch until it was red hot, and then measured the mass again. The wool gained half a gram, so, apparently, when you burn certain materials, they gain mass instead of lose it.
At station 3, we weighed a piece of ice before and after melting it. It lost .1 grams, which is essentially nothing. We kept the ice in one container, and all it did was melt, losing no mass, so it makes sense that the weight stayed virtually the same.
The fourth station was a chemical reaction station. We weighed two chemicals, Na2CO3, and CaCl2, and their total mass was 41.3 grams, together. Then we combined them into one solution and weighed that, and it lost 11.7 grams. Something in the reaction of those two chemicals must've caused the solution to lose weight.
We dissolved sugar at station five, weighing it before and after. It lost no mass, which makes sense because you aren't really losing anything by dissolving.
At the sixth and final station, we dissolved an Alka Seltzer tablet in water and weighed it before and after. Surprisingly, it lost a whole gram. This is puzzling because of the previous station, where dissolution caused the sugar solution to lose nothing.
In conclusion, we learned to be careful with our experiments, and that mass isn't always what you expect.
10/10!!
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