The Summer Boost Program at ConVal High School started off with a bang on Tuesday, July 6 — quite literally.
“The physical science teachers thought that exploding sodium in water on the first day of class would be a good ‘hook’ to get the students excited about class,” said Brock Lambert who set up the experiment.
The first part of the course explores the basics of chemistry and chemical reactions. The sodium and water demonstration allowed for the introduction of these chemistry principles, such as the law of conservation of mass, reactants versus products, as well as endothermic and exothermic reactions.
The students learned that all atoms involved in the reaction were neither created nor destroyed, and energy was released in the form of heat and light.