Experimenting During Class #3

Today we made biodiesel. We split into three teams. One team was the oil team, one was sodium hydroxide, and the last one was the methanol team. I was put in the sodium hydroxide, but I still saw what happened with the other teams. For the oil team what they had to do was pour 1L of used cooking oil into the 2L bottles. For the sodium hydroxide team, what we had to do was take 12 grams of sodium hydroxide and put them on petri dishes. Last but not least the methanol team had to pour 250mL of methanol into little jars. Everybody had to do 14 of everything because we had 14 people in our class.

After all 14 of the oil, sodium hydroxide, and the methanol were all done we had to go to the center of the table. Then everybody got a jar of methanol and one dish of sodium hydroxide. First we watched our teacher demonstrate how to put the sodium hydroxide into the methanol and shake it. Then we did it we had to shaked it too, and it took a long time for the sodium hydroxide to dissolve. After about 20 minutes or so the sodium hydroxide started to dissolve for some people and they went on to the next step. The next step is to go to the teacher and ask her to pour the liquid inside your 2L bottle. Lastly you tilt it up and down 4 times and put it upside down on top of a beaker. This is what happened in class today.