Our Higher and Advanced Higher Chemistry students made their annual trip to Strathclyde University recently, see the report below from one of the students.
We all got to school by 7:30 and after a rather bumpy bus ride we arrived at the University of Strathclyde. Our instructor told us about the experiments we were going to do and went through some safety rules (don’t eat the chemicals, don’t snort the chemicals etc). The first experiment we did was to make stalactites. The crystals grew from the desk as we poured the solution on, creating pretty crystal towers. For our second experiment we half-filled an enormous glass cylinder with water. We then added ammonia, bright blue dye and dry ice, which made the whole thing smoke and turn yellow. The colour could be changed back to blue by adding more ammonia, then to yellow again with more dry ice. After that we made slime by first melting our own PVA (which is more difficult than it sounds!). Adding borax and dye left us with either a blob of slime or a gloopy mess. The final experiment we did was adding various concentrations of a chemical to a solution of nickel salts. Each concentration created a different shade of blue, green or purple. Overall it was a great trip and getting to work in a proper chemistry lab for the first time was really exciting.
By Emma Carstairs S6
