Chemical Reactions

What is a chemical reaction? Well, a chemical reaction is the rearrangement of atoms where some of the original chemical bonds are broken and new bonds are formed to give different chemical reactions. The difference between chemical reactions between physical reactions is that chemical reactions usually have one substance transform to another while physical has no alterations to its composition.

This is the result of our first experiment. It wasn't like this at all in the beginning. It was a jumble of green red and yellow. Red being aluminum, green being copper and yellow being chlorine. We as the intellectual students we are, first thought these were edible. But now we all know, through the guidance of Mrs. Araya, we have to start rearranging them to create a formula that matches one product.

First we would mix copper ( green) and chlorine(yellow) together because that is the blue substance. This leaves aluminum all alone. Once we have that settled, we would start doing a single replacement by taking a green play do one by one and replacing them with the red.

This creates aluminum chloride + copper and aluminum. This is because there was not enough copper to replace aluminum thus having a lot of aluminum left over with copper at the bottom. The substance is clear because it was the copper chloride that made the water blue and when the copper chloride began to be used up the water turned white..

This is the result of our second experiment. As said in the first row, this was also clumped up together and it was the student's job to rearrange them to make a formula to match one product.

First we also would mix copper / green and chlorine / yellow with each other, because that is what makes up the blue substance, and red being aluminum. Again, we'd start the single replacements.One by one we exchange the copper/ green with aluminum/ red. In this particular lab we had the same amount of copper as we do aluminum. This creates copper by itself, making a product with no aluminum, and aluminum chloride mixed together as a liquid.

Now all we had t do was a find a product that had a lot of copper left over and a substance that was clear because when all the copper was transferred, there was none left to keep a substance of copper chloride and only left room for aluminum chloride.

This is the result of our last experiment. As said in the last two columns, we bright minded students had to rearrange 3 different types of elements ( copper, aluminum, chlorine) into an equation that would fit the standards for one product.

To do this we first started pairing aluminum this time, as we found it easier to do one color at a time. This left us with all green / copper and yellow/ chlorine play-do together. As said before we would have to replace the copper with aluminum . But this time there was a petite amount of aluminum. So when we exchanged them, it in turn made some copper elements alone.

As you can see there is a mixture of copper , chlorine, and though a little, aluminum in one huge category. This meant that we as a group had to find a substance that had little to no copper because it alone was a tiny amount compared to everything else. Next we had to find a substance that was fairly blue because in the picture, there is still some copper chloride with a hint of aluminum.

There are 4 types of chemical reactions. One is a combination reaction where two separate substances combine to form one. ( ex: C +O2 =CO2). Another reaction is the decomposition reaction where a compound is broken into 2 separate substances. The single replacement reaction has one element replace another element in a compound. (ex: A + BC --> BA + C). So this means that one element will be all alone or combined with a whole new element. Lastly, the double replacement reaction occurs when cations and anions of two different compounds switch places.

For Extra Info Watch this Video

In this mini science lab our group took different amounts of green, red, and yellow play-do and used them as their own element. We had to arrange them so that they create a formula that matches a chemical reaction we created with copper chloride, and aluminum foil.

Play-do Lab

Copper Chloride Pics and Videos