Science surrounds us. It is everywhere in our daily lives – all day, every day!
The importance of science in our daily lives may not be obvious, yet we make science-based choices all the time. Science is involved when we choose what to eat, what to buy and when we make decisions about our health-care.
Active, hands-on experiences, as well as research and problem-solving opportunities, build an understanding of what it means to know science. Learning about science develops our ability to ask questions, collect information, organize and test our ideas, solve problems and apply what we learn.
These are some reasons why we give such a huge importance to doing experiments in the lab. This week secondary students have been busy doing a practical chromatography experiment and also sublimating dry ice into a gaseous form. To give you an idea of how they work in chemistry, here are some images of our students and a bit of information about what dry ice and chromatography are.
Chromatography
Chromatography is a technique used to separate pigments of a mixture. There are many different types of chromatography. While some forms of chromatography require expensive lab equipment, others can be performed using common household materials. You can use, like our students did, some spinach leaves for the pigments and alcohol and paper to complete the chromatography.
Dry Ice
Dry ice is the common name for the solid form of carbon dioxide. It’s called dry ice because it doesn’t melt into a wet liquid. Dry ice sublimates, which means it goes from its solid form directly to its gaseous form. Since it’s never wet, it must be dry! During this experience we added water in order to see the bubbles form.
