Blog Post #4

     In this past week we mostly focused on our lab (That's rather brass of you, Cu) and we also began learning about Lewis diagrams. In the lab, we looked to find the mass percent of copper in a brass screw after dissolving it in nitric acid. We also learned about Lewis diagrams which are a simple way to show valence electrons and bonds in molecules. These two ideas tie well with each other because brass is actually a molecule made up of copper and zinc. In the lab, the nitric acid actually breaks down the bonds between the copper and zinc. This connects to Lewis diagrams because they represent the valence electrons and bonds in molecules. Lewis diagrams can help detail many things in a very simple way. Some details that Lewis diagrams can show are, charge, bond length, and bond order. All of these things are very helpful in identifying a molecule. We learned about the Lewis Diagrams this past week through various POGIL's and lectures. We also began to look at how bonded electron clouds look in terms of shape. We did this in a POGIL that involved tying balloons together. (See picture). The balloons are actually a fairly accurate way to portray electron clouds and really helped me visualize the shapes. The method that really allowed me to best understand the material we covered this week were the lectures. The lectures really helped me because you can watch concepts you don't understand over and over and then test your knowledge on the lecture quiz.
     A question I still have about this material is, how are triple bonds actually possible? I understand how quadruple bonds aren't possible but it doesn't really make sense to me how triple bonds actually work. I think my participation in this weeks material was good. I did all the homework and all the POGIL's so I feel like my participation was good. I'd say my one slip up however, was when our group forgot to add water to the copper solution before measuring its absorbance. I'd rate my understanding of this weeks material at about a 6 or 7. I feel like I understand what's going on but I definitely need to practice complex Lewis diagrams more and go over the electron cloud shapes. One new thing I have to think about after what we learned this week is, what happened to the zinc when we dissolved the brass screw with nitric acid and does it affect copper's absorbancy?