Monday, April 25, 2011

Objective 3: Solve for unknowns by manipulating variables

This objective became clear to me when I had to do an experiment in lab that was testing for the presence of maltose. I actually can not locate the actual results that I had wrote down from the experiment, and we couldn't write on the papers that we had at our stations. But I had to do the experiment that determined how a solution reacted if there was a presence of maltose. This experiment allowed one of the test tubes to act as the control with just water and the Benedict's solution. The other test tube contained water, Benedict's solution, and a sugar solution. The two tubes were then placed in a beaker of boiling water for about 5-10 minutes. The control solution stayed the same, but the sugar solution tube began to change into a red-orange color which proved that there was a presence of maltose. This experiment helped me understand this objective because I had to manipulate the other test tube by adding the sugar solution to it, and then added that tube and the control tube into the beaker of boiling water. The boiling water manipulation is what helped me figure out the unknown information of whether the solution tested positive for maltose. I've completed numerious experiments in the past during my Chemisty course that involved having to manipulate variables to solve for unknown information. The manipulation was either adding a certain solution, placing tubes in boiling baths, using the bunsen burner, and the list could probably go on and on. This experiment reminded me of the experiments that I used to do in Chemisty. So this experiment was able to click that old lightbulb on.



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