Looking Back: What Happened?
My groups experiment turned out pretty good. We started off by being handed citric acid and a piece of magnesium. We mixed water in with the citric acid and mixed it to get them combined. After we mixed our mixture pretty well we put in a piece of magnesium that we rolled up to fit into the flask. We then put a balloon over it to capture all of the hydrogen that the mixture was producing. When we were staring at the magnesium in the citric acid and water we noticed it was bubbling and you could see the steam on the top of the glass we were using. Our teacher had told us that one of the ways you could see how it was reacting was to test the temperature, we touched the glass and noticed it had gotten hot really quickly to the point where it would burn if you touched it for too long. Once we felt it had gotten too hot we removed our balloon and placed the vial into cold water to cool it down. After everyone had removed their balloons from their vials our teacher had a stick he would attach our balloons to and then we would lower our balloons onto a candle to create an explosion.
Looking Beyond: What Do You Think Has Happened? What's The Science?
Before we had begun the experiment our teacher gave us a lesson on Atoms and the periodic table. He had explained what happens when you mix certain chemicals together. I believe the reason the hydrogen reacted that way when it touched oxygen is because they were trading electrons. I also believe that is why the flame that came from the explosions were orange instead of the other colors you sometimes see in flames.
Looking Inward: Humans Doing Science - Lab Practice
I'm not exactly what other possibilities there are with this experiment but I believe my group and I got good results. We managed to get hydrogen into our balloon successfully without any accidents and our flame was orange.
Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact
I worked with Handy, Jackie, Nick, Brandon and Andres. I think we all worked together really well and were all involved in the process. I didn't contribute as much because I felt like there wasn't really a time for me to step in.
Looking Forward: What Next?
If we had the chance to redo the experiment the only thing I would change is how long we kept the balloon on the vial. I wish we had kept it on a little bit longer just to see how long it would take for the magnesium to stop bubbling. I would choose to work with the same group of people because we work together a lot and we get along really well and our experiments usually turn out pretty successful.
Take Aways
The biggest take away I have is the new knowledge about atoms and the periodic table. I found the lesson we had to be extremely interesting and it really gave me the chance to know how different elements would work together.