Friday, august 21st

Today we started the class talking about our homeworks. The teacher said there were some works that had a few details to improve but, since it was the first he would let it pass and he gave us everybody the complete grade.

After that we started the class talking about the questions in our homework:

What is science?

And:

Is it the same as technology?

At the end we all agreed that science is the study of the physical and natural world based on the scientific method to describe and explain unknown phenomena.

And technology uses tools, materials and techniques to make our life easier or more pleasant. It focuses on making things happen, not explaining or discovering how.

We also talked about what is chemistry.

And the teacher said: Chemistry is the study of matter and the changes it undergoes.

After that he asked: What´s chemistry?

I said: it is a branch of science.

Then he said: No, well..yes, but I mean what thing is chemistry?

Then somebody said: A desk

Somebody else said: The T.V.

And finally somebody said: Everything!

So that is chemistry: Everything, because everybody needs to know how to do something before doing it.

Then the teacher showed us the divisions of chemistry on the T.V., they are:

Inorganic Chemistry: Studies the chemical elements and their properties, except for carbon.

Organic Chemistry: Studies carbon and its compounds.

Analytical Chemistry: Tries to identify, isolate and quantify the components of substances.

Physical Chemistry: Studies the structure of matter and the energetic changes during transformations.

Biochemistry: Studies the vital process of living organisms.

When everybody finished copying the divisions, we got in teams and made an activity. We were supposed to be experts in different themes, for example I was expert in Biology and Biochemistry. Then we make a resume of the information the teacher gave us and changed teams. We needed to share the information we wrote.

Then the class finished and the homework was:

Make a concept map about what you learned in this ¨experts¨ activity.

And

You get home and find out your T.V. can´t turn on. Using the scientific method´s steps:

How do you solve this?

So that was our 2^nd class and, I think I actually learned something!!

Ok, I´m going to run and write it before I forget it...

Erin Alicia Gil

On Friday we talked about what is science, and what is chemistry about. We read about scientific method, beginnings of chemistry, early chemist, and more. For example:

We learned that fire was the first chemical reaction of chemistry, that people were looking for the way of turning metal into gold and the philosopher stone was the way, and that’s how Alchemia formed.

We learned about the scientific method, that Alessandro Volta created the first chemical battery. Also about Antoine Lavoisier, that he was known as the father of modern chemistry and he discovered the law of conservation of mass.

Also that chemistry is defined as the science of the natural matter. After Rutherford & Bohr, chemistry was therefore redefined as the science of matter that deals with the composition, structure & properties of substance. And in 1953, James Watson & Francis Crick deduced the double helical structure of DNA.

Laura Rodriguez