Where do
nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden
ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the
metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, the lively
host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series and technology
correspondent of The New York Times, spins viewers through the world of
weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the
universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked
up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.
If you want to know more about chemical elements and their importance in
our world, I encourage you to watch this video
Basic Chemistry
My Basic Chemistry blog is to help all who have problems with chemistry. I am taking chemistry this semester. So far, I have an excellent teacher who makes the class very interesting and fascinating. I will post everything that I learn in this class and share any experiments that I will do. I am creating the blog because one of my methods of memorizing is rewriting course materials, which will help me with chemistry. I hope not to bore you, so I will do my best to write interesting topics.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Fireworks
How do fireworks produce
their colors and loud bangs?
Only chemicals are
responsible for most of the spectacular effects. To produce the noise and
flashes, an oxidizer is reacted with metal such as magnesium or aluminum mixed
with sulfur. The resulting reaction produces a brilliant flash, which is due to
the aluminum or magnesium burning, and the rapidly expending gases produce a
loud report. For a color effect, an element with a colored flame is included.
Yellows colors in fireworks are due to sodium; the red color is made by
strontium; the green color is made by barium. Although you might think that the
chemistry of fireworks is simple, achieving the vivid white flashes and the
brilliant colors requires complex combinations of chemicals.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Marie Curie Sklodowska
Today, little bit about Poland
and the Polish woman, Marie Curie Sklodowska (1867-1934), who
opened the nuclear age. Marie
Sklodowska, as she was called before marriage, was born in Poland in 1867. Both
her parents were teachers who believed deeply in the importance of education. Since 1795, Poland was not listed on any map of the time because had been cut
up and absorbed into three countries: To the east was Russia (including
Warsaw); to the south was the Austrian Empire; and to the west was Prussia.
Because of this situation, the Sklodowskis believed that Poland could become
free only through the development of the mind—science—and through much hard
intellectual work. Marie had her first lessons in physics and
chemistry from her father. She had a brilliant aptitude for study and a great
thirst for knowledge; however, advanced study was not possible for women in
Poland. Marie dreamed of being able to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, but this
was beyond the means of her family. To solve the problem, Marie and her elder
sister, Bronya, came to an arrangement: Marie should go to work as a governess
and help her sister with the money she managed to save so that Bronya could
study medicine at the Sorbonne. When Bronya had taken her degree she, in her
turn, would contribute to the cost of Marie's studies. When Marie was 35 years
old with the degrees in physics and mathematics, she married Pierre Curie and
both with a huge passion dedicated themselves to the science. As a result of their hard work,
in 1903 the Curie’s won the Nobel Prize for their discovery
of two elements radium Ra and polonium.
But Marie Curie Skolodowska did not
stop her research; she continued her work on radioactive elements and won the
second Nobel Prize for chemistry for isolating radium and studying its chemical
properties. After winning two Nobel Prizes she still continued her researches into
radioactivity up until her death from leukemia, due to many years of
unprotected exposure to radiation at a time when its hazards were not yet
known. Marie’s passion and persistence in science impress many people. What a woman!
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Binary Compounds Type III
Hi
Cont’d of naming binary compounds. Today, we will learn how
to name nonmetals together, which in chemistry is called Type III. First of
all, we have to know which elements are nonmetals. All green elements are
nonmetals.
The rules are very similar to binary compounds Type I and II
1.
Name the first element, using the full element
name
2.
Name the second element with ending –ide
3.
Use prefixes to express numbers of atoms. Do not
use mono – in first element
Prefix used to show numbers in chemistry.
Prefix
Mono 1
Di 2
Tri 3
Tetra 4
Penta 5
Hexa 6
Hepta 7
Octa 8
Example #1
BF3 first
element is boron B, second element is fluorine F, but according the rule#3 we
have to change the ending (–ide) for second
element, therefore we have fluoride. Now, B has one atom (we don’t need to
indicate the one atom as B1,) which means mono but as rule # 3 says
do not use mono in first element. The second element is F with has 3 atoms, so you have to use prefix tri before the name – trifluride.
The full name for BF3 is boron trifluride.
Example #2
P2Cl5; P = phosphorus, Cl = chlorine. We have 2 atoms of P= diphosphorus,
and 5 atoms of chlorine= pentachloride; don’t forget to change the ending for - ide. The full name for P2Cl5 is diphosphorus
pentachloride
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Binary Compounds Type II
This post is a continuation of scrambling your brains with naming
compounds. So far we know that binary ionic compounds Type I contain metals
that always give the same cation. For example, Lithium always forms the Li 1+,
Magnesium forms the Mg 2+ , and Aluminum always forms the Al 3+.
However, there are many metals that can form more then one type of cation. For
example, Iron can be Fe 2+ or Fe 3+ and Chromium can be
Cr +2, Cr +3, or Cr +6 . Because those metals
can have different charges, we need to identify, which cation is present in
compounds containing metals that can form more than one type of cation.
Therefore, chemists used a Roman numeral to specify the charge on the cation.
The rules for naming those compounds are called binary ionic Type II compounds and
they are very similar to Type I.
Rules
1. The
cation is always named first, and the anion second.
2. The cation is name after the
element.
3. The anion is name by taking
the first part of the element name and adding –ide.
4. Use a Roman number to
specify the charge on the cation.
Examples
Compounds of iron and chlorine
Fe Cl, where Fe can have charge +2 or +3 and Cl is always
-1.
Fe ? Cl -1 to balance them to 0, we need to have on both
sides Fe +2 and Cl -2 or
Fe +3 and Cl -3 so
what do we need for both sides?
If we want to have charge +2 for iron we need to have charge
-2 for chlorine, the compounds will look like that FeCl2; let’s
check if the elements are balanced to 0.
+2 -1
charges
Fe1Cl2; Fe +2
times 1(single Fe has one atom you don’t need
to write the 1)= positive two, and Cl -1 times 2 =
negative two. The name of the compounds is iron (II) chloride
if we want to have charge +3 for iron we need to have charge
-3 for chlorine, the compounds will look like that FeCl3; let’s
check it the elements are balanced to 0.
+3 -1
Fe Cl3 ; Fe +3 times 1= positive 3 and Cl -1
times 3= negative 3. The name of the compounds is iron (III)
chloride.
Well naming compounds may seem difficult but practicing
problems will make you a master.
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