Night Before Exam

It's December 2 and today is my birthday. I'm spending over half of my night studying for this test.  I'm studying every study material I have. I'm practicing every problem. I'm looking at videos and rereading all of my notes. I'm just trying every possible thing to do in order to study. Net Ionic equations for double replacement is super easy and I feel good about it because you just switch cations with anions. However net ionic equations for everything else just confuse me a little bit. Synthesis, decomp, single replacement, and combustion are redox reactions, for you need to use the oxidation rules. If there are two nonmetals then you have to look at the periodic table to see whos is on top of each other and the element on top is stronger than the element on the bottom. Acid and Base always produce water. A strong base are group 1 and 2 elements on the periodic table.  A strong base has 2 or more oxygen's outweighing the hydrogen's. Also HBr and HCl are strong acids. Strong base/acids break apart in reactions completely. Today I did a rundown with all the rules that apply to every type of equation. I just hope all of my efforts pay off tomorrow!!!!!

Redox Lab

Today we did a REALLY cool lab! We put all of these metals into this little plate thing and put different solutions to mix with it! I think my favorite one was the calcium and copper (II) sulfate one! The reaction started bubbling then all of a sudden smoke started coming out from it and it was sizzling! How cool?! It then turned into a blue solid. After it cooled it started to expand a little to where we could see the inisde. What was really cool was that it was blue on the outside and a perfect snow white color on the inside! Another reaction happened simular to this but it was a brown solid but it didn't expand and crack like the blue one. Did anyone have a favorite reaction in the lab?

QUIZ!!!

When we took that quiz on Nov. 23 I was stressing out. I had a quiz in chem 1st hour, midterm 2nd hour and test in trig 4th hour. I did ALL of the extra practice in packets that are in schoology. After all of that I felt confident about the quiz. All of my hard work was put to use because I got a great grade on the quiz!!! Now if only I can do that on my test!! I feel like the first sections we talked about are pretty basic and it's honestly not too bad! It's just basically switching cations with the other anion! Plus adding the solubility rules which are pretty easy to remember. You just use those rules to see if a solid was produced from the reaction (switching cations with anions). An example of a solid is AgCl. An example of a non solid is CaCl. 

Helpful Links Below!

Double Replacement help

Double Replacement Video

Balancing Equations Video

Balancing Equations Practice

Double Replacement

AB(aq) + CD(aq)   --> AD(s) + CB(aq)

Above is an example of a Double Replacement reaction. I thought these were confusing at first but after a TONS of practice I got a handle on it! We did a lab on it! We had to take 2 solutions and mix them together. If they didn't turn a color then no solid was produced. To me the lab was super fun! There were some reactions though that didn't follow the solubility rules. But I would say for the most part the solutions followed the rules!

Solubility Rules

So at first I was very confused about the rules. I had to look at the piece of paper to remember the rules! In all honesty I thought I wouldn't be able to remember everything with all the exceptions and stuff! But I found it helpful to color the periodic table in 2 colors. One color representing the soluble elements and one representing the insoluble elements. It helped me visualize it much better. Then I made flashcards of the rules which helped me a lot too! I also found a video with acronyms to help as well! Check it out below!

Solubility Tricks Video

Rules Explained