Aqueous Solutions Introduction - Species in Solution

This entire unit is about things dissolved in water - aqueous solutions. If they are not dissolved in water, we do not have to consider them (too much).

 The examples we need to work through by tomorrow are:

We also did a brief experiment to show why some salts are alkaliine or acidic:

Organic Chemistry Revision

We made hexagons to represent every functional group we studied in Organic Chemistry earlier in the year:

We are putting brief study notes on the back of these, and playing a few revision games with them:

Practical Electrochemistry

Today, we made some half-cells and combined them with a salt-bridge and a voltmeter. Then, we were asked to make sense of our observations.

Standard Electrode Potentials and EMF

This is a big idea and we will spend the rest of the week exploring it:

1. What are standard electrode potentials?
2. How are they used to find the EMF of a cell?
3. What happens if a cell has a negative EMF?
4. How can EMF be used to predict what would be observed in a redox reaction?
5. How can standard electrode potentials be used to rank oxidant- and reductant-strength?

Electrochemical Cells - Introduction

We started the lesson by making an electrochemical cell using zinc chloride, a zinc electrode, copper (II) sulfate, a copper electrode. We found that this generated about 1.4V

Electrolysis

Electricity can be used to split compounds up into their elements. This is an example of oxidation-reduction.

Redox Half Equations