STOICH IS BACK!!!!!

I absolutley love stoichiometry! I think it's really easy and fun to do. Plus when I tell people I think Stoichiometry is easy I sound like a fancy smart chemist! ;) A lot of people think that just by hearing the name it'll be hard, but honestly it's pretty simple. So when we had the lesson about using Molarities in Stoich calculations I was pretty happy! The examples we did in class make sense to me. The only thing that trips me up is using liters/mL all the time. I just need some more practice with these types of problems. But what I love about stoich is that the steps to solve the problems are all the same. It hardly changes. It's the same basic flow. 

Here are the steps to solve problems using molarities in stoich calculations:
#1 Write balanced equation
#2 Calculate moles of reactants
#3 Find limiting reactant 
#4 Calculate moles of other reactant or products
#5 Convert to grams or other units if needed.  

Not too shabby! ;) 

Here's a little tip!! 
If the problem gives you 4 bits of info (2 info for each chemical) then you are going to find the limiting reactant. 

If the problem gives you 3 bits of info (2 about one chemical and one about the other) then you are just going to use plain stoich (not finding limiting reactant). 

Helpful Links Below!
Molarity Problems and Examples
Molarity with Stoichiometry
Molarity with Stoichiometry involving Limiting Reactants
Review of Stoichiometry - using Molarity

Murder Investigation

This lab was a little tough to say the least. At first when I got the lab, all I could think of was how stupid am I not to figure any of this out. I was honestly completely lost. But then I had that click. That click put everything into place! I figured out how to get the answer, the procedure, and the final calculations because of that one click. It was a chemistry break through for me! I think 2 weeks of not doing chem kind of made me stupid when we first got back because I couldn't understand anything. This lab was going to be the death of me because I was just so stuck. I couldn't figure out what to do. But the night before the lab I was super excited for it! I knew exactly what to do and I felt pretty proud! I just needed to get back into the norm of things in chem! All in all, I thought the lab was a good challenge. It was actually fun trying to figure out who killed Ms. Scarlet! :) I hope we do more labs like this in the future! 

Dilution

Definition: the action of making something weaker in force, content, or value.

Formula: 
M1V1 = M2V2 

M= molarity 
V= volume 

The M1V1 is also known as stock which should have the higher concentration since it is your beginning solution. 

Serial Dilutions are successive dilutions in a row.

At first I didn't understand what dilution was really. However, after the lab and physically diluting a solution helped me understand better. It's basically taking the solvent in equal amounts and adding a little bit of the concentration from the previous cup/solution into a cup. It just decreases the amount of concentration of the solute. It's kind of like having a city with tons of people inside it and the people are atoms of the solute. But then it gets too crowded and people start moving to suburban areas (less crowded). Then finally some people move from suburban to rural ares where there isn't many people (atoms). That's kind how I think of it. 

Helpful Links Below! 
Dilution Problems
Dilution Practice
Dilution Practice Problems