chemistry club visits!!!

Alejandro Torres helps students identify their fingerprints. 

Kristian, Alejandro, Paige, and Kennedy prepare a physical and chemical properties lesson....

Students work on identifying elements using flame tests.

Payton prepares the students for their handprint reactions....

Kara shows them how to prepare their handprints....

Kaitlin prepares a chemical reaction for the kids....

Higgs Boson discovered! June 2014 article

extreme tech article
Two years after CERN announced that it had discovered a particle that was probably a Higgs boson particle, the folks at the Large Hadron Collider have now confirmed that the newly discovered particle is definitely theHiggs boson as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. On the one hand, this is obviously a huge win for science — but on the other, there will be many scientists who are disappointed that, yet again, the Standard Model has held up to another round of immense scrutiny. If you were hoping for the Higgs boson to be the weird particle that led us towards the weird and wonderful nether regions of science beyond the Standard Model — supersymmetry, dark matter, dark energy — then sadly this is not the particle you were looking for.

This new study, published in Nature Physics, is confirmation from the LHC’s CMS experiment that the particle observed in 2012 decays into fermions. Previously we had only confirmed that this particle decayed into bosons. Bosons are force-carrying particles (like photons and electrons), while fermions are mass-carrying particles (like protons and neutrons). The Standard Model predicted that the Higgs boson is the particle that actually gives fermions their mass — and now, by smashing protons together at the LHC, the CMS detector has finally confirmed that Higgs bosons decay into fermions (bottom quarks and tau leptons). [doi:10.1038/nphys3005 - "Evidence for the direct decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to fermions"]

Following this study, we now have confirmation that this is the Higgs boson as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. It sits in the mass-energy region of 125 GeV, has no spin, and it can decay into a variety of lighter particles (pairs of photons, fermions, etc.) This means that we can say with some certainty that the Higgs boson is the particle that gives mass to… well, everything.  “Our findings confirm the presence of the Standard Model Boson,” says Marcus Klute of the CMS Collaboration. “Establishing a property of the Standard Model is big news itself.”

There are two key takeaways here. First, it’s hard not to be slightly disappointed that the Higgs boson is behaving exactly as expected. If its decay path had been slightly different — if it coupled with fermions slightly differently — then whole new avenues of research would’ve opened up. This confirmation from CERN’s CMS detector, though, reaffirms that — yet again — the Standard Model stands up. On the flip side, it means we’re no closer to pushing beyond the Standard Model. The Standard Model doesn’t account for gravity, dark energy and dark matter, and some other quirks of reality.

While we can only really guess at what causes these quirks, one of the most popular theories is supersymmetry. Supersymmetry postulates that every Standard Model particle also has a superpartner (called a sparticle, believe it or not) that is incredibly heavy (thus accounting for the 23% of the universe that is apparently made up of dark matter). It is hoped that when the LHC turns back on in 2015, after upgrades that will almost double its collision energy to 13 TeV, that it will have energy to discover these sparticles. If that doesn’t work, supersymmetry will probably have to wait for LHC’s 60-mile-long successor, which is already being planned.

Lesson Plans for December 8th - 12th

Lesson Plans for Chemistry I for December 8th – 12th

Monday: 

1.       Atomic Quest Back

2.       Conversion factor unit notes

3.       Worksheets 1 and 2 due on Tuesday

Tuesday:

1.       Worksheets 1 and 2 grade

2.       Worksheets 3 and 4 due Weds

Wednesday:

1.       Grade 3 and 4

2.       Pop quiz

3.       Worksheets 5 and 6 due tomorrow

4.       Test on Friday

Thursday:

1.        Quiz back

2.       Grade 5 and 6

3.       5 and 6 due tomorrow

4.       Test tomorrow over conversion factors

Friday:  Conversion factor test

Adv. Chemistry Lesson Plans for Dec 8th – 12th

Monday: 

1.  final review - pages 1-3 due Monday, pages 4-7 due Tuesday

2.  Acid/Base Pre-Lab

Tuesday:

1.  Acid/Base notes

2.  Acid/base lab – Lab report due Thursday with turnitin.com Friday midnight

3.  H+/OH- worksheet due Tuesday

Weds: 

1.        Finish acid/base lab

2.       Work on lab questions, data, and H+/OH- worksheet

Thursday:

1.       Continue notes on acids/bases

2.       pH paper due Wednesday

3.       Grade H+/OH- worksheet

4.       Acid/Base Lab due Thursday with turnitin due Friday midnight

5.       Continue notes

6.       pH paper due Wednesday

Friday:

1.       Grade pH paper

2.       Continue notes

3.       Bases review due Tuesday

4.       review pages 1-3 due Monday

5.       review pages 4-7 due Tuesday

AP Chemistry Lesson Plans for Dec 8th – 12th

Monday:

1.  go over redox 11-20

2.  redox ornament lab due Thursday

Tuesday:

1.  Cliff’s PT quiz with free response

2.  Grade PT worksheets

3.  Ch 4 part II homework due Thursday

Weds:

1.  go over Chem Club labs and demos for this week

2.  notes on part II of redox

 

Thursday:

1.  ready for chem club visit 6th hour tomorrow

2.  redox pop quiz I

3.  holiday ornament redox lab due

Friday:

1.  oxidation-reduction lab

2.  Monday meet at Carolyn Wenz

videos to watch for the journal assignment CHEMISTRY I

Large Hadron Collider

go into the LHC

neutrinos

Higgs Boson

what happens if you put your hand in the LHC beam?

JOURNAL TOPIC:

Write 5 complete sentences regarding the three videos watched in class on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Higgs Boson and Higgs Field, and the neutrino OR Google and write about them or the following:

OPERA experiment = Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus

Types of quarks, subatomic particles, beson, muons, gluon, etc…

Do not write:  "The Large Hadron Collider is neat." or something lame like that.  You will receive no points for that sentence....  Do not plagiarize.