The lungs...

Lungs are a vital organ in the body, for without them, you could not survive. The lungs are located in your chest and are protected by the ribcage so that they are safe from being damaged. Everybody has two lungs in their chest, however the left one is slightly smaller than the right. This is because there needs to be enough room left in your chest to fit your heart. (Kids health) Underneath the lungs sits the diaphragm, this organ is important in helping your body to able to breathe in and breath out. (Kids health)

The lungs, although the main part of the respiratory track, is not the only part of it. It starts from the nose and the mouth where the air is breathed in. The nose and mouth help to warm the air, filter it, moisten it and humidifies it. (Lecture notes, Adam). The air then goes though the Pharynx, or throat, which is a connection point to the rest of the system. Next is the Larynx (voice box) where the air helps to produce sounds which enables us to speak. After the voice box, the next pit stop in the respiratory system is Epiglottis which is very important. The Epiglottis closes off the larynx when swallowing to prevent anything from going into the lungs which would be a disaster, and after the Epiglottis its onto to the Trachea. (Lecture notes, Adam)

After the Trachea, it heads on into the lungs via two large tubes called the bronchi, with one going into the right lung and one into the left. (kids health) Each Bronchus (singular for bronchi) has smaller bronchi branches from it, getting smaller and smaller the further into the lung they go. (Kids health) Bronchioles are the tiniest tubes at the very end of the tree like structure and there are about 30 000 of them!! (Kid health) At the end of the bronchioles are tiny little air sacs called alveoli. There is even more of these than bronchioles as there is roughly about 600 million! (Kids health)

Adams lecture notes, Community Sciencee, Victoria Univresity.

Kids Health, Nemours, ‘Your lungs and respiratory system’, Viewed 27/3/09, http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/lungs.html

Limiting/excess...

I thought for a moment I had found a good website explaining limiting and excess but I was wrong. It starts off with explaining what limit and excess is. Great! It is sort of obvious though but it is good they explain it anyway, for those of us who don’t get it completely.

With a simple example used, it helps explain the whole concept of limiting and excess. Just in case, I might explain as well.

Limiting is the chemical, reactant, object that limits the amount of product made. Such as the trusted example from Nick, 2 frames, 5 wheels. The limiting here is the frames, as you can only make 2 bikes from two frames. 

Excess is the chemical, reactant, object that is left over once all the limiting is used. Again with the same example, the excess here is the wheels, as you will have one wheel left after 2 bikes are made.

The site starts off well enough, however it goes on with some examples of calculations for limiting/excess and I cannot make heads or tails from it. It is confusing and looks nothing like the way we do it. It confused me and I was complexly at a loss. At least the explanations of limiting and excess were clear and simple for me.

Stoichiometry : Limiting Reactant, viewd 21/3/09, http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/majors/tutorialnotefiles/limiting.htm

Balancing...

Balancing equations can be a little tricky some times, knowing where to put something and where not to and how to make sure it is right. This video with a slightly to enthusiastic chemistry guy shows how to do it, where to put things and what not to do. 

Not only does he show you how to balance equations but how to do it if you need to it from the opposite way, starting with the final product. He uses basic language for the most part, shows and explains it in simple ways and isn’t boring to watch.

"Balancing 1"

Bananaiscool, junior chemistry; balancing 1, You Tube, viewed 21/3/09, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQrV8RduttU

Mole songs!!!

This video, “Happy Mole Day To You”, was made to help students remember about mole. I think it is quite clever actually as already I remember that it is 10 to the power of 23, as they celebrate mole day on the 23 rd of October (the tenth month).

It is a fun way to learn about mole by making it into a catchy little song. I have in my head, “how many moles in hydrogen, just use the subscript, the number is 2”. Now I know that, it will help be able to work out others. It also mentions atomic mass and flashes the periodic table with the number flashing indicating atomic weight by the flashing numbers.

It is a good video clip, funny, clever, fun and it is brilliant for those wanting to know about mole but hates reading long pieces of text that are complicated and boring.

"Happy Mole Day To You"

This video clip is less informative than the first, however, it is highly catchy and very amusing. It tells you mole is a unit and that it is 6 x 10 to the 23. They try to use examples as to how big that really is by saying if you stack that amount of paper it would reach to the moon and back, and if you had that amount of marshmallows it would be so much it would block out the sun.

This is giving the viewer a small idea of how large the number really is, and as they say, tis to big to comprehend. However, after all that they say if you put some sugar on your hand, you are holding the same amount (6 x 10 to the 23) of atoms in your hand. This gives you an idea of how small atoms are, even if mole is a large number, in terms of atoms it is small.

"Mole Is A Unit"

youTube, Happy Mole day To you & Mole is a unit, You Tube, Viewed 21/3/09

Mole...

A mole is the unit of measurement one uses when measuring atoms, ions and molecules. Mole is used because using grams or any other normal measurement would be impractical and it wouldn’t work very well at all whereas mole was designed to measure molecules, atoms and ions.

Mole is, if you want to get technical, 6.02 x 10 to the power of 23 – Avogadro’s number. Most times though people just refer to this quite big number as ‘mole’. 

Helmenstine, A M, Ph.D., What Is a Mole and Why Are Moles Used?, About.com: Chemistry, viewed 21/3/09, http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/f/blmole.htm

I believe that this was a good site to have a look at about mole, as it didn’t go into all the chemistry jargon, it was short, it was simple and it was understandable. There was not much there to confuse you and it was fairly easy to make sense of.