Exothermic Reactions

Exothermic Reactions

An exothermic reaction is a process or reaction that releases energy in the form of heat. One example of an exothermic reaction is making ice cubes. To make ice cubes, you are freezing water so it goes from a liquid to a solid. In order for something to go from a liquid to a solid phase, a substance must lose energy.  The energy is released to the surroundings. For example, in the presence of water, a strong acid with dissociate quickly and release heat and because it releases heat, that makes it an exothermic reaction. Without exothermic reactions, we wouldn't be able to make ice cubes, we wouldn't have candle flames, we wouldn't be able to combine atoms to make molecules in a gas phase, we wouldn't be able to burn sugar, iron wouldn't rust, etc...


Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exothermic_reaction


Sources: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/thermo/faq/exothermic-endothermic-examples.shtml

https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chemistry-textbook/thermochemistry-6/enthalpy-59/exothermic-and-endothermic-processes-277-3716/

Synthetic Materials

            SYNTHETIC MATERIALS

One synthetic material is lab meat. It's animal tissue grown without a living host. The meat is made from stem cells. 

1) Cells are taken from a cow's muscle. 

2) The people mix the stem cells with nutrients in a lab dish where they multiply a lot. 

3) The tissue is electrically stimulated to grow into muscle like strips.

4) The new muscle fiber is put through a grinder.

5) Red beet juice and saffron are added for coloring.

6) The meat is then formed and cooked and made into a hamburger.

 If we are able to literally grow meat, it will greatly affect the world in the future because it will help feed more people. There's a lot of meat demand right now and growing artificial meat will help to supply people with some. "Experts say new ways of producing meat are needed to satisfy growing carnivorous appetites without exhausting resources. Raising animals destined for the dinner table takes up about 70% of all agricultural land." (Dr. Kurt Schmidinger) 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/first-reaction-lab-made-burger-lacks-flavor/2618599/

Hunting the Elements

THINK PAST) Before I watched the "Hunting the Elements" video, I didn't know much about the periodic table. All I knew was that it was created by Dmitri Mendeleev and that it was an arrangement of a bunch of things such as hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, flouride, neon, sodium, etc...........

THINK PRESENT) One of the things I learned was that 90 of the elements occur in nature. The other ones are man made. I also learned was that an element's number is the highest unexcited energy level for an electron of that element.




THINK FUTURE) I want to know what most of, or the majority of the elements on the periodic table are made out of.

Energy

What is energy you may ask? To put it simply, energy is the ability to do work. According to a law of motion, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be changed. Two forms of energy are kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is energy of motion. Literally every single thing that's moving has kinetic energy. (Ex: cars, planes, trucks, someone running, etc...) Potential energy is stored energy. It can be found in elastic objects(rubber bands/springs), chemical bonds within food and fossil fuels, and objects above the ground that have potential to fall. We are starting to use more and more energy as the years go by. In fact, the amount of energy Americans use doubles every 20 years. 

I've put together some interesting facts about energy that you might find interesting.

-Only 10% of the lightbulb is used to create light and the other 90% of the lightbulb's energy creates heat. 

-The world's biggest blackout occurred on August 14, 2004.

-Enough sunlight reaches earth's surface each minute to satisfy the world's energy demands for a year.

-The United States produces half of it's energy from coal.

-Heating and cooling rooms use the most energy in the American homes today.

-American hospitals are some of the most intense energy buildings on the planet. 

-There are two basic groups of energy.

-Renewable energy (solar, water, and wind power)

-Non renewable energy (fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas)

(2011) Random History 

Retrieved from: http://facts.randomhistory.com/energy-facts.html 

Date accessed: Jan 2015

 

Ivanpah Solar Generating System

There is a massive solar power plant in California called Ivanpah. It consists of three towers. It is surrounded by more than 300,000 mirrors angled perfectly to reflect sunlight to the tower.  The top of the towers are black so they absorbs A TON of thermal energy. Those towers absorb so much light, that they're having issues with birds flying through there, and catching on fire. Spoke pilots have even said that the light almost blinded them when they flew near there. What happens in those towers is that first, water gets pumped through there and it's so hot that it bubbles and turns into steam. People take the pressure from that steam and use it to power generators, turbines, and things like that.