This week was a lab week in AP Chemistry. We finished our data collection part of the lab on finding the mass of copper in a brass solution. We also worked on a few pogils to extend our knowledge about Lewis structures. We completed a pogil that had to do with bond order and bond strength, another one regarding  resonance and a third one on VSEPR theory. We learned an extensive amount of new ideas and concepts from these pogils that will likely be very important to us as the unit went on. To reflect on these pogils, I thought they were very helpful in allowing me to grasp new and difficult ideas.

            The first pogil we worked on was one that had to do with two main ideas, bond order and bond strength. Bond order occurs when you require many bonds to connect two atoms’ valence electrons together so that they are able to share electrons. A higher bond order will mean that more energy is needed to take apart this bond. A lower bond order means that it will take less energy to take apart the bond. We were able to understand this from working on the pogil on bond orders. To reflect on this pogil, I think it was quite helpful in helping us learn about bond order and bond strength. These are two important ideas that we will probably be using later in the trimester.

            In our next pogil we took a look at resonance in Lewis structures. We had already learned what those were about from the lecture quiz that we worked on last week. Resonance is when you can multiple Lewis structures from the bonding of the same atoms based on using different bond orders on different atoms. Another very important main concept that we learned from this pogil is that as bond order increases, bond length decreases. To reflect on this pogil, it was also very helpful and allowed me to understand the basic principles of resonance in Lewis structures 

            In the last pogil we did for this week, we worked on VSEPR theory. This theory shows us the overall shapes of molecules. We finished this pogil by creating a Lewis structure for an atom and then building a balloon model of that atom using the surrounding atoms and unbonded electron pairs as balloons. The central atom was in the center and not needed to be represented by balloons. This pogil helped show us what a compound will truly look like when it is bonded. To reflect on this pogil, I found VSEPR theory to be quite hard and complicated, but the pogil helped me a lot.

Diagram showing the VSEPR theory

           This week we also took part in a lab. We completed our data collection part of the lab. Our question which we are testing is what is the relationship between absorbance and concentration of Cu in a brass solution. Although I was not in class for the first day of the lab, I came back the second day and got down the data and had the lab described to me by one of my partners. We tested the relationship between absorbance and concentration by breaking down a brass screw in nitric acid to get it down to only Cu. We then took our absorbency data and will spend next week analyzing this data. To reflect on this lab, I thought it was pretty interesting and fun, I'm excited to do the lab report.

            I thought I had an alright grasp of the material that we worked with this week. I didn’t find it too complicated, but some of the ideas were difficult to understand, and i am still foggy on some topics. My participation in all of our work was 100% besides the day I was not in class. I don’t have any questions about anything we went over this week and I have seen that I still need to work on getting better at preparing for labs better, by coming up with better beginning questions.