CHEMISTRY: I love watching you play with light bulbs in lab today! So it worked, and then it didn’t, and then it did! That’s great! I love the way you kept experimenting with ideas to see how to make those light bulbs light up! Do you know that’s when you often learn the most and grow the strongest – from failure?

Here’s the lecture on metallic bonding… make sure you can explain the properties of metals. Not just what metals do, remember, but why they do it (using the Electron Sea Model).

How’s the Water Wire Take Home Lab coming? Let me know if you have any questions about what to do with this take home lab. I want you to do all parts of the lab. You will need to get the light bulb from some place like Radio Shack. I have skinny popsicle sticks that will work really well, if you’d like to use them. One word of advice – try it first with a smaller voltage battery than the 9V battery suggested on the sheets. Last year, we found that the 9V batteries kept blowing the light bulbs. (After today, does that make sense?) For sure, you will want to make sure you don’t leave the light bulb in the solution – quick way to blow the bulb!

Don’t forget to also do the last part of the lab – to test five different liquids at your home to see if they are ionic solutions. You will write this up in your lab book and you will include all your results in the Observations section of your lab report. Check your syllabus for the due date. Good luck with it, and have fun!

flickr photo by jimmymac210