Friday, October 28, 2011

ELEMENTS

The element Silicon is a metalloid and its atomic symbol is Si. Its atomic number is 14 while its atomic mass is 28.0855. It was discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, he was a Swedish chemist. He discovered it in 1824 by heating chips of potassium in a silica container and then carefully washing away the residual by-products. Silicon is produced by heating sand with carbon at temperatures at about 2200 degress celcius. It is the seventth most abundant element in the universe!!


The element Iodine has an atomic number of 53 and atomic mass of 126.90047. It was discovered a French chemist called Barnard Courtois in 1811. Courtois was extracting sodium and potassium compounds from seaweed ash. Once the compounds were removed, he decided to add sulfuric acid to further process the ash. On accident he added too much acid and a purple colored cloud came from the mass. The gas condensed on metal objects in the room, creating solid iodine. Today, iodine is chiefly obtained from deposits of sodium iodate and sodium. The human body requires small amounts of Iodine. It is part of a hormone produced by the thyroid gland that controls the body's rate of physical and mental development.

Silver is a transition metal and its symbol is Ag. Its atomic number is 47 and its atomic mass is 107.8682. Archaeological evidence suggests that people have been using silver for at least 5000 years! So a scientist never really "found" silver. Silver can be obtained from pure deposits, from silver ores such as argentite and horn silver, and with deposits of ores containing led, gold, or copper.




Nitrogen is a nonmetal and its symbol is N. Its atomic number is 7 and its atomic mass is 14.0067. It was discovered by the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. It makes up 78% of the earths atmosphere and it is the 5th most abundant element! It is obtained from liquefied air through a process known as fractional distillation.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Neon Signs

Neon is an element on the periodic table. It is used in many signs especially at night because of the birght colors it can give off. Neon signs are made up of many different gases. It even is the 5th most abundant gas on Earth! There a re types of neon gases and  they are Helium, Argon, Krypton, Neon, and Xenon. Helium emits a pinkish-red glow, Krypton emits a yellow-white light, Argon emits sky blue, Xenon emits a bright lavender light, and neon emits a red colored light.

Friday, September 23, 2011

The Recycling Factory

Dear Mr.Smith,
I found a way to separate all of the materials in the dump truck. To separate the Steel cans from the rest of the materials i would use several powerful magnest hanging above the conveyer belt. Then i would use large tank filled with water to get the milk jugs because waters density is 1 while the Milk jugs density is 0.95 so the milk jugs will float on top of the water. Then i would use the nest to skim the top of the water to get the milk jugs out of the water. Then to get rid of the soda cans i would use the Concentrated sugar water because its density is 1.5 and the density of the soda bottles is 1.4, so the soda bottles would float to the top. Once the soda bottles float to the top i would use several nets to skim the top of the Concentrated sugar water to get the soda bottles out. All that would be left would be the Aluminum soda cans which would would be on the bottom of the pool and in would use several nets to scoop them from the bottom.

Sincerely,
Diana Lane

Friday, September 2, 2011

Why Chemistry is the most importatant science.

Chemistry is he study of matter and the change it undergoes. Without Chemistry we wouldnt be able to enjoy ice cream! We use chemistry to be able to make ice cream, cook, make medicine, etc. Without chemistry we wouldn't have have medicine and without medicine we could all die...  There could be widespread epidemics and no one would be able to do anything about it! We also use chemistry so that we have electricity.Without electricity our life would be very simple and boring. We probably wouldn't even be able to survive without chemistry since air is matter and it undergoes changes so that we can breath.