Looking Back: What Happened?
I think my groups experiment was very successful. We started off with a couple grams of sodium polyacrylate and some water. Our task was to figure out how much the sodium polyacrylate could absorb before becoming a liquid again. My group had a few good moments and a few bad moments with this experiment. At one point we added too much water at once and our mixture seemed like it wasn't going to work. After stirring the materials together for a while it became the texture we wanted. We decided to experiment with it and so we added blue food dye to it. Nothing drastic happened but it looked pretty cool. My group also decided to try and see how the sodium polyacrylate would react to other types of liquids like milk for example. When we mixed the two things together the milk turned bubbly.
Looking Beyond: What Do You Think Has Happened? What's The Science?
When we first started the lab we had been given very little instructions and were basically told to mix the materials together and see what happens. After stirring for a while I noticed that the mixture was starting to clump up and become a solid. What?? How can a liquid like that turn into a texture like the one we created? We figured out that because of osmosis solvent tends to move from areas of low solute concentration to areas of high solute concentration. For our experiment the solvent was water and solute was the sodium polyacrylate. The water is being forced in which causes the molecule to expand thus giving us the gel texture.
Looking Inward: Humans Doing Science - Lab Practice
I believe we got desirable results, our experiment turned out really well. We were able to test our mixture to it's full capacity and we found out that it can hold up to 1,000 milliliters of water before it turns into a liquid. We tested out another type of liquid as a side experiment and discovered that since it wasn't water based it would not work. I feel as though we really got the best out of this experiment.
Looking Outward: Collaborations and Impact
I worked with Handy, Jackie, Nick and Andres. We've worked together before and I really feel like we work well together because we all contribute something. Whether it be getting the materials, sharing opinions on how we can fix the experiment or improve how we are doing it. Jackie, Handy, Nick and I took turns mixing the sodium polycrylate and the water together. Nick mainly poured the water in while I slowly stirred it together.
Looking Forward: What Next?
If we were to do this again the only thing I would change is how quickly we poured the water in. I'm wondering if we could've gotten more water storage if we had poured a small amount of water in at a time. One of the mistakes that we did make is when we poured the water in quickly it took a long time for the sodium polyacrylate to get to the gel like texture again.
Take Aways
The biggest take away from this experiment is the new knowledge of the substance we were using. I had never heard of sodium polyacrylate before this experiment and now I know how it reacts to liquids and what causes it to do what it does.