Cooking like a real chemist!

Last week I got to experience a pretty intense dose of chemistry review. Tamara and I are determined to get an A in this class. The class has taken a lot of my time this last week, and this is going to continue for at least another 5 weeks. Herbie is getting a lot bigger too fast. He has been a great chemistry student though. Since the lab is the same lab I have already done a few years ago, everything was familiar. During lab, we separated a ternary mixture. We used ammonium chloride, sodium chloride (table salt), and silicon dioxide (sand) and combined them together. We were asked to separate each compound from the mixture by using different methods. The coolest part was heating the mixture and watching the ammonium chloride sublime from the table salt and sand. I was standing in the lab with my lab coat and goggles on with a glass stirring rod in my hand stirring my mixture over a Bunsen burner, and as I was watching the thick white smoke of ammonium chloride evaporate from my dish, I was thinking to myself, "I am cooking like a real chemist!" So far the math in Chemistry seems really easy. Understanding how ions combine to form different compounds, balancing equations, and relearning chemistry nomenclature has been really great. I haven't been doing chemistry for a long time, so this review was a really good idea.
The week ended at "Ditch Friday", but I didn't really ditch from school to go. Sharon and I had a little bit of fun. It turned out to be a really windy day, but it was still very relaxing. Well, I have to get back to doing my homework...