May 7: Class began with a continuation of our work yesterday analyzing an article written by a different author and news organization but about the same subject material as yesterday:

• 1 Million Animal And Plant Species Are At Risk Of Extinction, U.N. Report Says (NPR)
• 1 million species under threat of extinction because of humans, biodiversity report finds (NBC News)

After completing another text analysis organizer, students compared and contrasted the two writing styles as part of a small group discussion. Next, we watched a video segment about the IPBES summary from Fox News.  Students contrasted the articles with the video and evaluated the effect of tone on viewer perception of the material.

With so many possible sources of information out there, and the information often marketed as news but actually representing something other than objective fact, students watched The Baloney Detection kit video below.  To help ensure everyone can differentiate between science and pseudoscience, students wrote down descriptions of all 10 points on a handout, with the expectation that they will use the points to determine whether a source should be used in our project work as students of science.

May 8: To begin class, we made use of some neat older equipment unearthed in our chemistry store room.  Students used polarized light filters to visualize the emission spectra of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, neon, argon, and mercury.  We connected the emission spectra back to the concept of electron orbitals, previewing our work to come as the end of the year approached.

Next, we moved our “What Comes Next” discussion forward by creating a network diagram connecting facts from the CNN, NPR, and NBC News articles (key facts) with possible solutions (what can we do?).  After building out the network diagram, students formed teams based on interest and were tasked with narrowing their own focus to the solution they would most like to explore and digging deeply into each solution by crafting a Project Proposal with the following elements:

• Clearly describe the problem
• Clearly describe the proposed solution and explain how you would use STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) to share your proposed solution with the class
• Identify and explain the stakeholders: who or what will be impacted by the solution and why
• Research previous efforts to solve the problem and identify what worked and what did not
• Describe five major constraints: what are the realities of successfully implementing the solution?  For example, cost is a universal constraint (everything costs money!) – how much might your solution cost (based on previous efforts) and who will pay?

Notes from class:

P2

Keep Learning!

UW Study: Ocean acidification could kill salmon sense of smell

After concluding the chapter 13-15 test last week, we used our class period today to work through the logistics of the next few weeks (an accounting of how many students are taking AP tests and/or are attending field trips) and then focused on student feedback about how to invest our class time.  One theme that came up repeatedly was the application of chemistry to the environment through project work.  To honor that feedback, students were tasked with reading and analyzing an article released this morning by CNN titled “Is Nature Over? Maybe.”  After a class discussion (class notes below), we concluded the class period with the TED Talk below by George Monbiot on the concept of rewilding.  The intent is to push students beyond familiar and comfortable solutions to the question: What can we do climate change?

Class Notes:

For today, students worked through the Lesson 83 Worksheet.  We approached Part 1 as a thought experiment and notes from the whiteboard are pictured below.  The Lesson 83 PowerPoint is included for reference.

Homework:

• Read Lesson 83 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 83.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 83 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

The Lesson 82 Worksheet called for students to work in groups to prepare salt solutions and work through the math to calculate the molarity of their assigned solution.  Although we did not review it in class, the Lesson 82 PowerPoint is available for download.

Additionally, students are encouraged to practice observing the relationship between moles, volume, and molarity using the University of Colorado Molarity PhET simulation below:

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/molarity/latest/molarity_en.html

Homework:

• Read Lesson 82 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 82.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 82 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

Our work today involved thinking about solutions from a molecular perspective.  Students briefly reviewed yesterday’s Gummy Bear portion of the lab via the ChemCatalyst on slide 3 of the Lesson 81 PowerPoint.  Students then received the Lesson 81 Worksheet and the Particle Views Handout.  The handout was used in Part 1 of the worksheet.  For Part 2, students assembled into groups and gathered around lab stations to gain experience diluting a 3.0 M stock solution to a 1.5 M solution.  They also observed how two different volumes of a solution with the same concentration both appear the same color.  The lesson helped illustrate the connection between molarity (M), particle density, and the number of moles (particle number) in a solution.

Notes from the whiteboard:

Practice Problems from class (Lesson 81 Exercises from the textbook):

Homework:

• Read Lesson 81 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 81.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 81 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

For the first lesson of Chapter 15, students were immersed in the vocabulary of solution concentration.  The Lesson 80 PowerPoint includes six important vocabulary words that students recorded in their lab notebooks. Students received the Lesson 80 Worksheet and worked together in groups to complete Part 1.

For Part 2 of the worksheet, students were shown gummy bears (Haribo) that had been placed overnight in either water, 0.1 M sugar, 1.0 M sugar, 2.0 M sugar, or corn syrup  The gummy bears were rinsed and the mass was measured.  The results are pictured below:

The video of the supersaturated salt solution shown in the PowerPoint is also available below:

Notes from class on April 16:

Homework:

• Read Lesson 80 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 80.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 80 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

To launch our Toxins Research Project, students are tasked with researching key information about five toxins of interest to them.  Information will be recorded on the Toxins Research Project handout (Day 1) which is due at the end of class.

The websites below are useful for getting started:

• CDC Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• PubChem (NCBI)
• PubMed (NCBI)
• Safety Data Sheets (Flinn Scientific)
• Safety Data Sheets (Sigma-Aldrich)
• Snake Venom LD50 Database
• USNLM Toxicology Data Network (NIH)

For inspiration, the websites below can help get you started:

• Alcohol (ethyl alcohol – beer, wine)
• Alcohol (mixed with other drugs)
• Arsenic (contaminated water)
• Benzene (gasoline, cigarettes, industrial processes
• Benzodiazepenes (Xanax)
• Caffeine (beverages, chocolate)
• Carbon dioxide (combustion)
• Carbon monoxide (incomplete combustion of fossil fuels)
• Cocaine
• Copper (industrial processes)
• CBD (marijuana)
• Formaldehyde (smoking, manufacturing)
• Glyphosate (weed killer)
• Iron (vitamins)
• Lead (Flint water crisis)
• LSD (ergot fungus)
• Mercury (seafood)
• Methamphetamines (meth, MDMA/Ecstasy)
• Monosodium glutamate (food additive)
• Nitrogen oxides (smoking, air pollution)
• Nicotine (vaping and cigarettes)
• Opioids (heroin, Vicodin)
• Oxycodone (OxyContin)
• Psilocybin (magic mushrooms)
• Silver (argyria)
• THC (marijuana)
• Toluene (gasoline)

For the final lesson of Chapter 14, we worked through the Lesson 79 PowerPoint in which we ultimately compared the toxicities of regular and diet soda, containing fructose and aspartame, respectively.  Students then received the Lesson 79 Worksheet to work through for the remainder of class.  As a reminder, we have a mini-quiz on Thursday, so students should come to class tomorrow prepared with questions from our work in Chapter 14 (Lessons 74-79) and from the Chapter 13/14 Study Guide.

Homework:

• Read Lesson 79 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 79.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 79 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

Class began with a review of the connection between moles and particles.  From there, students worked through an entry task requiring them to balance a combustion reaction, calculate atomic masses of the products and reactants from the reaction, and then to compare the results (thus demonstrating conservation of mass).

Next, students had the remainder of the class period to work through the Relative Mass and the Mole POGIL packet.  Key concepts from textbook lessons 76-78 are distilled into a PowerPoint slide deck from students who desire additional review.

Class Notes:

Video Review:

Homework:

• Read Lessons 76-78 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lessons 76-78.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lessons 76-78 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)

Our work today involved a Counting By Weighing activity.  Students recorded the mass of a small number of objects to then estimate the mass of a much larger number of objects.  The activity was designed to help students begin to make sense of the mole, a unit of chemistry that represents 6.02 x 10^23 of any given object.  In chemistry, we use the mole as a way to measure the number of atoms or molecules.  Students also received a copy of the Chapter 13/14 Study Guide as a tool to begin preparing for the quiz next Tuesday.

Notes from the whiteboard:

Homework:

• Read Lesson 75 in the textbook.  Login via hs.saplinglearning.com and enter your username and password:
  • Username: wahps****s-####### (**** = first 4 letters of your last name and ####### = student number).  Remember to include the dash between s and #.
  • Password: S-####### (the S must be capitalized)
• Work through the practice problems at the end of Lesson 75.
• Please ask questions about anything from Lesson 75 you do not yet fully understand.

Opportunities For Help Outside of Class:

1. Mr. Swart’s office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school until at least 3:00 (later with advanced notice)
2. Use the vast number of resources available on this website – check each lesson!
3. Email Mr. Swart for help if staying after school is not possible
4. Form a study group with other students  to review concepts from class
5. Attend MASH after school (M/T/Th in Library)
6. Attend Math Lab after school (T/Th in Room 124)