KITCHEN CHEMISTRY COURSE - MOLECULES

We have started doing an online course called Kitchen Chemistry. It has been organised by The University of East Anglia. Today we learned about MOLECULES.

What are molecules?
Molecules are made of ELEMENTS.

WATER is made of molecules which are made of the elements HYDROGEN and OXYGEN.
SALT is made of molecules which are made of the elements SODIUM and CHLORINE. The scientific name for salt is SODIUM CHLORIDE.

We learned that there are gazillions of molecules all around us. There are more water molecules in one glass of water than there glasses in the whole world.

We learned today that molecules become less DENSE when they are heated. This means that they spread out. This is what makes HOT AIR BALLOONS fill up and rise. We made our own hot air balloon using a cardboard box, our toaster and a bin liner. These pictures shows what happened:

STATIC ELECTRICITY EXPERIMENTS

I found some experiments in my Usborne book that I wanted to do. They helped me to find out about STATIC ELECTRICITY. These experiments helped me to learn that sparks happen when some materials are rubbed together. It is all to do with ELECTRON PARTICLES that get CHARGED when you rub them. 

First of all, I did a balloon experiment. When the rubber on the balloon rubs against my hair it creates a type of electricity which makes my hair stand on end!

 

I then did another experiment using black pepper. I put some pepper in a plastic box and put the lid on. I then rubbed the lid with a hat made out of wool. Soon specks of pepper started jumping about and stuck to the inside of the lid. It looked really cool!

 

 

The next experiment I did was using bits of paper from a hole punch. I scattered the little circles on a plate and then I rubbed a ruler on the woollen hat to create static electricity. Wool is one of the best materials for creating static electricity. It passes electron particles to the ruler very easily. I loved the result of this experiment.

 

 

POTATO GROWING

We are going to grow our own potatoes in the garden this summer. We got some free seed potatoes from the Potato Council through the post. First of all, we had to CHIT them. These means putting them in a place where there is lots of light so they can sprout some shoots. We left them for about three weeks to do this and then we planted them in compost inside some black bags. I wonder how many pototoes will grow. Here is a photo of me chitting the potatoes.

The potatoes are growing really well. It took them about three weeks to get this big.

Here I am harvesting the potatoes in June. They tasted delicious!

I LOVE CHEMISTRY

I was watching "Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom" and I learned all about the amazing chemist Marie Curie. It inspired me to learn some facts about Chemistry. I want to know more about CHEMICAL REACTIONS. I have learned about the Periodic Table of Elements. It shows all the chemical ELEMENTS in the whole universe. They all have special numbers and letters so scientists can know what they are. O is oxygen and H is hydrogen. Fe is iron.

We did an exciting chemistry experiment today. We wanted to find out what happened when we heated the chemical AMMONIUM CHLORIDE. The symbol of ammonium chloride is NH4CI. Before it was heated the ammonium chloride was a solid. It was white crystals. When Mummy heated up the ammonium chloride I saw GAS coming out of the test tube. The colour was grey-white.

Ammonium chloride is a very unusual chemical because it changes from a SOLID to a GAS without changing into a liquid first. The science name for this is SUBLIMATION.

 

Ammonium chloride is made when miners get COAL out of the ground. It is used in FERTILISERS to help plants grown. It is even found in LICORICE.

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS - FLICK BOOK & CATCH THE BIRDIE

I have discovered that our eyes sometimes work in funny ways. I made flick book and a catch the birdie to show how our eyes and brain works.

DANCING SPAGHETTI EXPERIMENT

Today we did a fun experiment. I got the idea from a website. It is a good experiment to see how CHEMICAL REACTIONS work and also learned about MASS,VOLUME and DENSITY. We got some cooked spaghetti and put it in a pot with some chemicals inside to see if we could get them to move around and dance. The chemicals we put in the water were:

VINEGAR
BICARBONATE OF SODA
FOOD COLOURING

What happened?

The spaghetti bobbed up and down.

 

Why does it work?

 

The chemical reaction is caused when the vinegar and bicarbonate of soad react to one another and make CARBON DIOXIDE.

The surface of the spaghetti is rough and tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas are attracted to it.

These bubbles make the spaghetti bigger (increases the VOLUME) but does not change its weight (MASS). This lowers the DENSITY of the spaghetti. The water around it is more dense so the spaghetti is carried upwards.

This was all discovered by the ancient scientist ARCHIMEDES who was the first person to understand why things FLOAT.

 

This is ARCHIMEDES' PRINCIPLE

This is the force placed on a fluid is the same as the weight of the fluid displaced.

 

This explains why boats float and why life jackets work.

GLOWING JELLY

First of all, we made a jelly. We put something special in the jelly called TONIC WATER. Tonic water makes things glow in the dark because it contains a special chemical called QUININE. When the jelly had set, we took it out the fridge, turned out the lights and got a special torch called a UV TORCH (UV stands for "ULTRA-VIOLET"). We saw that the jelly was glowing red.