Boat Races!!!

Man oh man was this a stressful, yet fun, project! My partner and I had to design a boat that would float, not turn into a flaming ball of fire, and be light enough for our putt-putt engine to push it across the gutter using our biodiesel and a candle wick as the fuel. I'm glad my partner was in engineering because I wouldn't know where to start! He came up with a good design to use a milk carton as a boat. We made tons of modifications to the boat the first day of testing but our engine kind of let us down. 2 days later the day of the race we had a different boat that was a little shorter with the engine lower. Our little boat made it across at record time of 55 seconds! Our boat may have been the slowest in our class but in my heart it was the fastest! Slow and steady wins the race! It was cool that we used actual fuel to burn the candle wick to make our boat go. It was a fun project with some stress added to it because getting it across the gutter was a trouble the first day of testing our boat. But we made it!

Here's our cute little boat!

Making of Biodiesel in the lab!

The morning of the making biodiesel was a very stinky morning! I brought a change of shirt so I wouldn't smell so bad later on in the day from the restaurant oil, but I could still smell the oil throughout the day! I thought it was really cool that we could make our own biodiesel. What's so cool about it is that it only look about 50mins to make honestly. 50mins is all it takes to save the environment. It's quick and easy. Plus imagine all the excess oil from all the restaurants! We can reuse it for fuel! This project really turned me into a huge tree huger to be honest. Yes it was a stinky lab but it was really cool to make something that a car could run on! I think it's super cool! The oil kinda looked like syrup and it was really gross but cool at the same time! What freaked me out though was that the second ingredient (that I forgot the name of...maybe glycerin??) could eat your flesh if it stayed on there longer enough. But hey everyone survived the lab!

Here are some pictures below of our biodiesel!

Making of Biodiesel commercial

I had no clue what biodiesel was at the beginning of this project. But after some research for our commerical project, I really think everyone should use it. It's home grown so we don't have to keep going to foreign countries to get our oil. It's also a renewable source! It decreases green house gasses by 86%! Imagine what the environment would be like if we all switched to biodiesel. The Earth would certainly look healthier and greener! This making of the video really opened my eyes to how badly we treat the environment. I loved this project and I really wish we could do another thing like this but sadly the end of the year is coming to an end. I can't wait to see what next years chemistry students will come up with!

Here's our video below!
Biodiesel: Make the Environment Great Again!

Here are some other video's from our class and from other schools that I thought were really good!
The Misconceptions of Biodiesel
Tom the Trucker Uses Biodiesel
Chem Biodiesel Project
BioCat vs Fossil FuelHog
Biodiesel: The Key To A Sustainable Future
What is Biodiesel?
Biodiesel: Fuel for All!

Bond Polarity

I understood this on the Friday we learned it. However the following week after my brain seemed to just dump it out and made me forget all of it! I had to relearn it again. I think the second time made more sense however. It kinda confused me when the bond itself can be polar because of imbalance of charge and when one atom is more electronegative than the other and then the molecule itself is nonpolar. The trick is to look at the shape since shape determines function. If the bonds are all pointing away from each other they basically cancel out since no one atom sucks the electrons (partial negative - most electronegative atom). Also you have to remember if the shape is polar or nonpolar in general. It got confusing to me no doubt but I finally got it later on. It's a lot to handle that's for sure! But once you have that click it'll all make sense!

Helpful Links! 

Polarity

Bond Polarity and Electronegativity

Second Lecture

The second lecture had me all confused. Resonance and shapes of molecules and electron geometry. Man that was some pretty confusing stuff I'll tell yah! It took me awhile to get but I finally understood it. The shape is just how many bonded entities there are and pay attention to lone pairs. The electron geometry is just where the electrons are found. If you have two bonds and two electron lone pairs the electron geometry is tetrahedral. It took me a bit to piece it all together but I finally got the click and everything came together! Also the online practice tests helped out a lot in helping me understand all of the things we learned. Resonance tripped me up the most though. When we added polar and nonpolar it frazzled my brain as well! No lone pairs=nonpolar. Nonpolar is symmetrical. Polar is just the unsymmetrical shapes with lone pairs. Only polar shapes are trigonal pyramidal and bent molecules.

Above is Resonance 

Helpful Links!

Sigma and Pi Bonds: Hybridization Explained!

Bonding-polar vs nonpolar molecules -keeping it simple

How To Tell if a Bond is Polar or Nonpolar (the super easy way)

Bonding Models and Lewis Structures: Crash Course Chemistry #24

Chemical Bonding

So at first I semi understood the first lecture. It made sense but once I got to the Lewis Dot Structure with have need share and formal charge I got a little confused. But I quickly understood it better when we had that lab in the library. It was fun to draw on the tables! Plus it was good to have models as well and visually see the molecule. Working in groups helped me too. We all collaborated and helped one another out. I hope sometime in the future we can do that again!

Helpful Links!

These links helped me for studying for the test! I would strongly recommend reviewing these over! These are for visual people (or anyone in general but it helps visual people) that need to see how everything works. These videos are kinda long but trust me they are worth it. They go in depth! I hope this helps all y'all!

Group trend for ionization energy
Period trend for ionization energy
First and second ionization energy
Electron affinity
Electronegativity
Metallic nature