Week 15

Baking Soda and Vinegar Experiment

1. What did you learn this week?

Today we talked about chemical reactions. A chemical reaction occurs when two substances are mixed and they create a new substance. We experimented the phenomena of baking soda and vinegar. My group did a variety of experiments, putting both baking soda into a balloon, putting vinegar into a Erlan Meyer flask and baking soda into a balloon then flipping the balloon causing the baking soda to mix, as well as doing that again but adding water to the vinegar.  We found that the experiment with both water and vinegar didn't blow the balloon up as much as just vinegar. Overall we learned that atoms rearrange to form new molecules. The total number of atoms and the total mass stays the same before and after the reaction. We also talked about how matter is made of particles that are constantly in motion. 

2. How can you apply what you've learned to teaching in the future?

I can apply this weeks experiments to my teaching in the future. We walked through how we would teach an elementary classroom about the chemical reaction that we observed in lab today. We would have to explain to our students what baking soda is and what vinegar is, as well as creating more guiding questions to help facilitate discussion and deeper thinking. We would want to build off ideas and begin to introduce the idea that all matter is made of particles. This information will not only help students during these experiments but will help them to better understand the world around us. 

3. What are new or remaining questions?

A remaining question I have is, can students carry out these experiments by themselves?