Your Footprint

In some classes today, I mentioned your ecological footprint. This is how many Earths we would need if everyone lived life just like you do. You plug in information about your life, and it tells you your Carbon Footprint, your Food Footprint, your Housing Footprint, and your Goods and Services Footprint, all in a chart. If you're interested in how much energy you use and how much you waste, and how to reduce your footprint to not use up precious resources on our planet, visit this link. You'll have to go through a couple steps to get to the quiz. For distances, you may want to use the distance calculator.

Article Review

8th Grade Science: Read and outline one article at this site. Be prepared to present a summary in class.

Massive Molarity

For the past week, we've been studying Moles. Today I want you to work on the equations in the computer lab. For the molecules listed below, determine:

• How many grams are in a mole.
• How many moles are in a gram.
• What the percentage of each element is in the formula.

We've done this before with the elements in the back of the room. Now you're going to do it with molecules. Let us take water as an example. How many grams are in a mole of water?

• H = 1.0079 amu
  
• O = 15.999 amu
  
• There are two Hydrogens in Water.
• Therefore, 2(1.0079) + 15.999 = 18.015 amu.
  
• Now, transfer that directly into grams for the Molar Mass, and a mole of water weighs 18.015 g.
  

Next, determine how many moles would be in one gram. Again, we did this in the lab yesterday. Take water's mass in grams, and divide it into one, such that 1/18.015 = 0.0555 moles.

Lastly, figure out what the percentage of each element is in the molecule. This is easier than you might expect. Take the individual masses of each element, and divide them by the overall mass.

• H2 = 1.0079 * 2 = 2.0158 g
• O = 15.999 g
• H2 + O = 18.0148 g
• H2/H2O = 2.0158 / 18.015 = 0.1119 or 11.19%
• O/H2O = 15.999 / 18.015 = 0.8881 or 88.81%

Please do all three steps for each molecule. But I don't want you left unsure as to what to do, and if you are doing this correctly. Therefore, when you have completed all equations for each molecule, after each molecule, go to this website to doublecheck your work. About halfway down the page you can plug in formulas to get all of this data, to get the correct answers. Be sure to use the correct capitol or lower case letters as needed. (You certainly could just fill in the correct answers from this website, but then...I'm also asking you to show all work for each step.)

Following is a list of the molecules I'd like analyzed:

• He
• O2
• C6H12O11
• H2
• LiOH
• H2PO4
• H2SO4
• PCl5
• SF6
• NaCl
• CsC2H3O2
• NH4ClO
• Li2CO3
• NCl3
• BCl3
• N2O3
• Cl2O7
• CO2

Oh- and this assignment is due at the end of the period, to hand in to Mr. 'iissa, so you better get cracking! :-)

The End of the World....?

For IPC, please go to Counterbalance and read the article pages on Angels and Demons and the Large Haldron Collider, and the science (or lack thereof) in Angels and Demons. This page links to four other pages that need to be read as well, to whit:

• Anti-Matter
• The Physics of Creation
• The God Particle
• Other Technical Notes

Read through these pages for tomorrow and come prepared to discuss them in class- if you agree with the author, Adrian Wyard, or disagree, and why; if the science in Angels and Demons is accurate or not.

Science Article Titles

Effective immediately, the Critical Evaluations aforementioned will be expanded, such that all students will now be required to provide a list of the titles of both Science Friday and World Science in their respective subjects. On Science Friday this will be due on Mondays; for World Science this will be due two school days after World Science comes out, or the next Monday, whichever comes first. Science Friday comes out every Monday; World Science comes out twice a month, but at random intervals.

Only titles are due, and only titles from that issue that just came out. On any given Friday, you will have between five and ten Science Friday articles. Any given World Science issue will have up to twelve articles. Look through the articles and find the ones that pertain to your respective discipline (marine biology, biology, chemistry, or chemistry & physics). Write a list of the titles down. If you are unsure if an article is about your discipline just from looking at the title, you may have to click on the link for World Science or listen for some thirty seconds to Science Friday.

The easiest way to do this is to put your email address into the World Science website, in the top left corner, and wait to receive your email with the links. If you do not do this, it will become very difficult to determine which articles belong to the most recent disbursement of articles. For Science Friday, the easiest way is to go to iTunes and subscribe to the free podcast of "Science Friday" by putting "Science Friday" into the search parameter. If you do not have iTunes, you can download it for free here (even if you don't own an iPod). If you do not have iTunes and don't want to download it, you can remember to check Science Friday on your own every weekend.

You will be graded by percentage of the number of articles, receiving points for every correct article you include, and for every incorrect article you do not include. Thus, for example, if your class is Biology, and you include an article on "Breast Cancer Gene Patents Challenged", that is clearly about biology, and you get points. If you include an article on "Do Moon Craters Harbor Caches of Water Ice", this is clearly not about biology, and you will lose points.

Hopefully, this will help all students 1) realize that there are many articles to pick from in their Extra Credit Critical Evaluations, which are still due at the end of each month, and 2) become more inspired to do the Extra Credit.