Chem Club
What is Chem Club?
Exactly what the name implies! It's a club where we research and conduct fun and interesting chemistry experiments during lunch! We meet every Thursday, and we conduct at least one experiment a month. We have conducted 2 experiments so far; the elephant toothpaste and an egg drop through a bottle. The reason why we aren't able to do an experiment every week is because we need to run test experiments, so it usually takes a while to prepare an experiment. So far, only our president has been doing the experiments, so we're dividing out the work, so she won't be the only one working. I formed a group with Erika and Khanh, and we researched and conducted an experiment for a Chemical Garden (or Crystal Garden).
Egg Drop Through a Bottle
-Experiment conducted by our President
This experiment is basically trying to get a hard boiled egg to get into a beaker that has a smaller mouth than the egg. Well, we kind failed this one experiment, but we conducted several more, and at least one egg went through without exploding. The science behind it is that the density inside the bottle is greater than the density outside, so it causes the egg to get sucked down. It was a really fun experiment to watch!
Chemical Garden
-Experiment conducted by Tracy, Erika, and Khanh
Description:
It's basically making chemicals grow like plants, except that the chemicals are metal salts. This lab requires very basic materials, such as silica gel beads, metal salts, and sodium hydroxide. (Hot plates are optional but recommended to speed up the dissolving.)
Materials:
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1 Large Beaker (200ml-500ml)
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Gloves
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Tweezers or forceps (or spoon)
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4 grams of sodium hydroxide
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6 grams of crushed silica beads
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Hotplate
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Scale
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Stirring stick
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Metal salts:
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Copper sulphate=blue
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Manganese chloride=purple
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Cobalt chloride=red
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Magnesium sulfate=pink
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Nickel nitrate=green
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Steps:
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Make the sodium silicate solution.
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Add 4 grams of Sodium hydroxide to 10 ml of water. Stir over hot water.
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Add 6 grams of crushed silica gel beads. Stir over hot water dissolve all of the silica. Add more water if it won’t dissolve.
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Once all silica has dissolved, dilute water to 100ml
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Add your metal salts using tweezers.
The science behind it is the sodium silicate solution. For example, take cobalt chloride. Because the ionic strength of the cobalt solution inside the membrane is higher than the sodium silicate solution which forms the bulk of the tank contents, osmotic effects will increase the pressure within the membrane. This will cause the membrane to tear, forming a hole. The cobalt cations will react with the silicate anions at this tear so forming new solid. In this way, growths will form in the tanks; these will be colored (according to the metal) and may look like plants.
Okay, so the chemicals didn't grow as tall as we expected. Maybe it was the problem with how much water we had and the ratio between Sodium Hydroxide and the silica gel beads. Either way, the chemicals were able to grow a little bit, so we'll just say mission accomplished.
