Journal Entry 4/25

Sorry this blog is so late...when I checked the website, no assignment was posted. Here's my work though:

(1) If you were to pour some orange juice into a glass, the glass is acting as a force of the juice. The glass does not shatter or fall in on itself, so clearly the force of the glass on the juice is counteracted by some other force. This means that the orange juice must have a force on the glass. For orange juice to have a force on something else, it must be made up of tiny particles that are in constant motion. This makes sense because I know that if I were to leave that glass outside, when I came back the juice would have evaporated from the glass. If the particles inside were not moving, how would that orange juice have evaporated? It wouldn't have. I am confident in my belief that the collisions of the particles within the juice, which are moving, act as a force against the glass and prevent the glass from falling in on itself.

(2) I know that gases are made of very small particles, in constant motion, with a lot of empty space between them. If I were to position 5 people at different spots on the floor, then spray, consecutively, two fragrances into the air, the person closest to the initial spray would smell the fragrances first and the person farthest away would smell it last. Every single person, regardless of their position, would smell the fragrances. This is because the empty spaces in the air take in the particles of fragrance. The fact that people in different locations all eventually smell the fragrance proves that gases are in constant motion. The fact that fragrances (plural) can be sprayed into the air proves that there is empty space in said air. If there were no spaces, then the fragrance wouldn't go into the air at all and no one would smell it.

(3) I know that liquids are also made of small moving particles because of evaporation. When a liquid is spread across a piece of paper, that spot gradually and slowly shrinks. The liquid particles do not go into the desk, they jump off the paper into the empty spaces in air. I also know that the empty space within a liquid is present, but less than that of air. If I was to combine two liquids, let's say 50 ml of blue liquid and 50 ml of green liquid, these two would form one liquid that was slightly less than 100 ml, like 96 ml. This proves that some particles of one liquid go into the empty spaces of the particles of the other liquid. The fact that the two colors mesh into one also proves that the particles are moving (hitting off of one another) and falling into empty spaces. There are less empty spaces than in gas though because there is only so much additions to the water that you can have, before there's too many.

(4) When you add heat to a system, the particles begin to move faster and they hit off of each other more frequently. For example, when you put a pot of water on the stove and then turn it on, you are adding heat to the system. Initially, the water is still. With time though, the water begins to boil. The molecules of water are hitting off of each other so much (with the addition of heat) that they begin to break through the surface. In contrast, when a substance is cooled, the particles begin to slow down. This is turn lowers the frequency of their collisions. If you take a glass of water and put it into the freezer, it will eventually turn to ice. This is because the cold is slowing down the particles to a point where when they collide with one another they begin to stick together, rather than bounding off. These connections reduce the area of the water and turn it into a solid, rather than a liquid.