Blog Post #10

     This past week in Chemistry we covered a lot of subjects surrounding equilibrium. We talked about equilibrium conceptually and we also did some more mathematical problems solved with equilibrium. We also saw many demonstrations of equilibrium in action and talked about how thermodynamics tie in to equilibrium. All these ideas ultimately come together  under the idea of equilibrium and predicting how different factors can react the rate at which a reaction occurs. Some important ideas to note with equilibrium are that in reality there is no left in right to the reaction. We just say left and right in order to explain better the idea of the forward and reverse reactions occurring at the same time and going both ways. Although we didn't have any actual labs this week that went along with learning about equilibrium, we did do a couple demonstrations with two beakers were we allowed them to reach equilibrium and tested to see if our RICE tables were giving us correct results. We came to understand all of the material we covered this week through various worksheets (Equilibrium I problem 9) and POGIL's. You're actually making us turn the worksheets in this time and to be honest I think it's helped me a lot because I've actually been working a lot  harder than usual on the worksheets. One question I still have about this week is why do thermodynamically unfavored reactions tend to have more reactants and thermodynamically favored reactions have more products?
     My participation this past week has been very good I'd say. I came in after school a couple times and came in today and really got some valuable feed back which I really feel like will reflect on my test score. I'd rank my understanding of this week's ideas at about a 7/10. I feel like I really understand the math behind all of the equilibrium problems and RICE tables. Some things I can work on however is the conceptual scenarios behind equilibrium and I could use a little more work with equilibrium problems that also involve thermodynamics. One of my main ideas that has changed over this past week is the thought that reactions will always go both ways. I never thought of it as constant cycle like process I always just thought a reaction kept going until there were no more reactants left.