Alchemy Lesson 1 (All years)

Guest

The summer holidays had been a welcome break for Scarlett. She'd forgotten how easy it was, working just one job. Although, she loved teaching Alchemy far too much to give it up. This lesson she'd prepared would be a rather easy one, just to get back into the swing of things. She'd tossed up on making disappearing ink, or the 'silver tree' experiment. She'd settled on disappearing ink, purely because she thought it'd be more fun than waiting for quite a long time while a piece of copper turned silver.

She'd gone to the classroom early, to write up the steps of the experiment on the board and lay out the materials needed. Should the students have any questions, she would, of course, answer them. And if they were going well for time, she'd ask some questions relevant to the theory of it.

The board read:

"Making disappearing ink:

1. Measure out a 0.10 gram of thymolphthalein into a 150-mL beaker.

2. Add 10 mL of ethyl alcohol (or about 14 mL of ethyl rubbing alcohol) and stir to dissolve the solid.

3. Add 90 mL water and stir. The solution will be milky white.

4. Add 20 drops (1 mL) of 3 M sodium hydroxide solution. The solution will turn blue. Use a dropper to put a few drops of the disappearing ink onto a piece of cloth. The colour should fade from blue to colourless in about 3 minutes.

5. If the colour fades too quickly, add an additional 5 drops of sodium hydroxide and test again. (NOTE: After a few days, the disappearing ink may fade to colourless quickly. Addition of a few drops of sodium hydroxide will restore the solution to a 3-minute fading time.)

6. Store in an air-tight vial."

Guest

Like potions, Ceyal enjoyed alchemy. He liked the methodicalness of it, that everything had a specific measurement and order. In a constantly changing and unexpected world, potions and alchemy never wavered, unless you did something wrong and messed up the instructions. Most of the time though, Ceyal was successful.

Entering the classroom, he nodded at the professor before heading straight to the back of the room. After setting down his bag, he read through the instructions on the board. Since everything was already laid out, he decided to begin. Taking up the thymolphthalein, he measured out exactly 0.10 grams of the white powder into the specified beaker. Next, he picked up the ethyl alcohol and measured out 10 mL before pouring it into the beaker and using a glass rod to gently stir it.

Once the powder was dissolved, he added 90 mL of water, stirring it again with clean glass rod and watching as it turned a milky white. That done, he picked up the dropper, squeezing the pump and inserting it into the sodium hydroxide solution and releasing the pump so that the liquid traveled up the dropper. Mentally, he counted twenty drops, going slow and steady and seeing the milky white solution turn blue.

Taking up a clean dropper, he transferred the liquid onto a piece of cloth, glancing up at the clock and silently rejoicing as the blue faded away in the specified time. He poured the beaker of disappearing ink into a clean, air-tight vial, labeling it with his name, year, and house just in case. He then sat back and waited to see if there were any other instructions.

Guest

Clara loved the chemistry aspect of alchemy. These classes were like labs, and she rarely felt more in her element than when she was doing science. She took a seat, and, seeing that one of her classmates was already starting, looked up at the board for the instructions.

Thymolphthalein. Interesting. It was a pH indicator. She was more familiar with phenolphthalein, since she used it frequently in titrations, but thymolphthalein was similar, it just had a higher transition range and turned blue instead of pink. She scanned the list until she got to sodium hydroxide. Ah, that makes sense. NaOH is a base. We want to put enough in for the pH indicator to turn blue temporarily, but still fade after a few minutes. It's basically a titration, but surface level--we're only focusing on the physical effects of the basic solution on the pH indicator, rather than using it to actually determine the concentration of a substance.

She got to work, measuring her materials, dissolving the thymolphthalein in the ethanol to create a solution, and adding the water for substance. Then she carefully started dropping the sodium hydroxide in. It was a familiar process--the first few drops hit the water with a quick flash of dark blue, which disappeared instantly. As she added more of the base, the color began to linger a little longer. By the twentieth drop, the solution was dark blue, though she knew if she swirled it around for a while, it would return to it's original milky shade.

She set the NaOH aside, and took a dropper full of the solution, squeezing some of it out on her cloth. Sure enough, the color slowly faded. She carefully poured the rest of the solution into a vial and put a stopper on it. Then she cleaned up her workspace, and pulled out a small notebook and pencil from her bag, doodling Sierpinski's triangle in the margins as she awaited further instructions.

Guest

Cora sighs quietly as she wanders into the classroom, looking around at those already gathered. Alchemy was not one of her favourite subjects. It was too similar to potions which she was useless at so this didn't give her much hope. She saw two students were already there, and both seemed to have started working on something already. Her eyes headed to the front of the room where she saw a list of instructions on the board. Great... she'd quietly hoped the first lesson would just be an introduction and theory so she could atleast pretend to begin with to know what the hell she was doing. Sighing she glanced back at the two students there. She recognised Clara's dark brown hair and took a step forwards, before reminding herself of the awkwardness of their meeting over the summer holidays... best not go there. Instead, Cora moved to set up next to the boy. He'd chosen a good position near the back... hopefully she wouldn't get noticed there.

She watched the boy for a few moments as she positioned herself at the desk seat next to him, although he seemed to not be paying much attention to her, or have not noticed her arrive. She looked at the work he was doing and furrowed her brow, it seemed like he knew what he was doing and wasn't blowing anything up. This was going to be awkward.

Finally, and reluctantly, Cora turned her attention back to the board and looked at the instructions. She reached her hand up to scratch at her head, her fingers getting tangled in the mess of blonde hair on top of her head. Great - she'd forgotten to brush her hair again. After some struggling, Cora managed to free her hand. She reached into her bag she'd brought with her and started writing the instructions down - they would be easier to follow off her desk than the board. This would be the first error of the lesson on Cora's part as she wasn't so accurate in her note taking...

Cora next set about setting up what she would need on the table, taking the occasional glance to the guys desk next to her to try and copy his movements. She measured out the ingredients - although not so carefully, and added them in order. She wasn't entirely sure whether she had ethyl alcohol or ethyl rubbing alcohol (nor was she certain what the difference between the two was) so she decided to split the difference on the measurements and added 12ml. When pouring out the water, it didn't quite reach the 90ml mark, and she managed to spill some over the desk before adding it into the beaker. Mixing it, it wasn't quite a milky white but... Cora simply assumed her colour judgement must be off. She was following instruction after all.

Finally Cora started counting in the drops of the sodium hydroxide solution. After about 14 Cora got distracted and lost count, so simply continued until it looked to be blue enough. Finally she took the solution and dropped it onto the cloth as instructed. She'd glanced over and watched the boy do this, and watched as his blue faded away. Looking back at hers... it stayed put. She decided to allow a few more minutes... it still did not fade. Biting her lip Cora looked at her hand scrawled instructions, then at the board. It didn't say anything about what to do if it didn't disappear... Blushing slightly at her failure, she quickly screwed up the piece with the blue blotch and put a clean piece out, hoping that would be convincing enough before taking a seat to wait for the next part.

Guest

Clara glanced up from her sketching, and turned to survey the rest of the class. Looking behind her, a familiar face caught her eye. She watched, inwardly cringing a little bit as Cora added drop after drop of sodium hydroxide. She didn't seem to be counting, she was well past thirty when she stopped. It will be a miracle if that works, she thought, and she continued to watch as Cora dripped some of her solution onto her cloth. She couldn't see from where she was sitting, but from the way Cora scrunched up the cloth and replaced it, she could guess what had happened.

With an exasperated sigh, and without really thinking, she got up and walked over to the other girl's desk.

"You added too much sodium hydroxide," she stated. She picked up the girl's beaker and swirled it around. It stayed a deep shade of blue.

"It's an easy mistake. When you're doing a titration, you can't really afford to be distracted," she said pointedly. "It requires precision. One drop can tip the entire thing."

She carried the failed solution over to a designated waste container, dumped it out, and returned to the desk. She gestured to the board.

"It says twenty drops, but it's hard to be completely sure, since your other measurements might not be exact. You should start slowing down around fifteen, and by eighteen, you might want to swirl it around a bit to make sure the blue still disappears before adding any more. There's a very fine line you have to avoid crossing--like I said, one drop too many and you have to start over."

She went back to her desk and retrieved her notebook and pencil, flipping to a new page. Going back to Cora, she drew a quick graph--one line that stayed relatively level, then suddenly shot straight up.

"The reaction looks like this if you graph it." She drew a dotted line just before the sudden change in the graph. "This is where you want to stop. At this point, it will take a little while for the blue to clear up, but it will, eventually. Once you hit this shift, it'll stay blue no matter what.

"Now, watch," she began to measure new ingredients for Cora. "Precision with this part isn't as important, as long as you're not way off. The only real reactants are the thymolphthalein and the sodium hydroxide. The ethyl alcohol is just there to dissolve the thymolphthalein, and the water is just there for substance. The amount of water doesn't actually matter at all, since it's got a neutral pH. That's all this is, really," she explained. "Thymolphthalein turns blue around a high pH. Sodium hydroxide has a high pH. If there isn't much of it, the thymolphthalein won't detect it, so it won't turn blue permanently. But once you reach a certain point," she gestured to the graph, "That happens."

When she was finished measuring and mixing everything, she took the pipette and picked up some sodium hydroxide with it. She added three drops to the solution in quick succession. The place where they touched the solution turned blue for an instant, then immediately returned to normal.

"See, at first, it barely has any effect at all." She counted out thirteen more drops, until the blue started to linger a little longer. She picked up the beaker and gave it a swirl. The blue disappeared. "Now it's getting closer, but it's not quite where we want it yet." She added two more drops. She had to swirl it for longer to get it to disappear. One more drop. Swirl. Vanish. One more drop. Swirl. Vanish.

"That's twenty. One more drop should probably do it." She added one, very carefully. The solution turned blue, as it had before, but she didn't swirl it this time. Instead, she took a clean pipette, and used it to place some of the solution on Cora's clean cloth. After an agonizing couple minutes, it started to fade, then disappeared completely.

"There. Any more, and we probably would have had to start over. It takes practice to develop an eye for it--it's hard, especially in this case, since she doesn't want us to swirl out the colour at the end. You just have to pay close attention."

She turned to look at Cora to see if she understood.

Guest

Cora was sat sulking quietly to herself and was surprised when Clara showed up at her desk. She hadn't thought her mistakes had been that obvious and Cora nervously glanced from Clara to the teacher, before listening to what she had to say. At the word titration Cora raised her eyebrows, letting out a confused mutter of "Titration...?" before nodding along as if she understood. She guessed it was something to do with her droplets with how Clara was talking about precision, and she had said that Cora had added too much of the Sodium Hydroxide. Atleast that was apparently her only mistake in the eyes of Clara as thinking over it Cora was positive she probably messed up somewhere else too.

As Clara took her beaker of the failed mixture Cora jumped up from her seat about to shout and stop her throwing it away - then she would have nothing to show for her work, but she didn't really want to attract the attention of the teacher to her errors. So she begrudgingly allowed Clara to throw the mixture away. Cora looked down at her empty desk a moment, trying to work out what she was meant to do now when Clara returned and started explaining the reaction to her. As she drew the graph, Cora watched and nodded with a soft "Oh..." before pointing at it, a lot further along after the sudden incline on the graph. "And I was about here I guess...." she commented softly, not really expecting a reply as Clara seemed to be in the zone with it.

As she was told to watch, Cora obeyed, turning her eyes to watch as Clara measured out the ingredients carefully, listening and nodding along. The way Clara spoke about PH levels and such reminded her vaguely of the science classes she had at her muggle school back home before she was invited into Hogwarts. She remembered that Clara had also been in muggle-wear when they had met previously and guessed she'd had a similar upbringing in terms of education... except it seemed that Clara had retained much more of it than Cora had. She hadn't really thought to relate Alchemy to science... in her head it was potions. And she hated potions. She hated Science too so it probably wasn't all that different really...

As Clara started to drop in the droplets Cora leaned with her elbows down on the table, face up close to the mixture as she counted softly the drops going in, watching the reaction more closely. "One... two... three..." she leaned back slightly as Clara swirled the beaker, watching the blue fade into nothing and nodded at her explanations. As she hit the twenty mark, Cora frowned at the suggestion they should add another. "Are you sure? Won't it... you know..." she pointed back at the sharp peak of the graph, before watching Clara add another droplet. As she put the mixture onto the cloth, Cora held her breath, glancing between the clock and the cloth every few seconds as she waited for it to disappear. It felt like forever before the blue finally faded and Cora let out the breath she had been holding.

"That's amazing... thank you." she commented, looking to Clara with a soft smile. There had been no reason for her to help her, but Cora was more than grateful that she had. And she felt like she had a better grasp of the mixture than she had done from the board instructions. She was tempted to give Clara a hug, but figured it would probably be unreciprocated so simply settled for the smile. "I'm not so good at this stuff... I appreciate your help. I think I get it now."

Guest

It was the start of a new school year and Stephanie was determined to do well in her OWLs. She would accept nothing less than an O in every subject she took. It was a high standard she knew, but Stephanie was more than willing to put the time and effort that was necessary to achieve those grades. She was capable of it and if she put her mind to it, it could be done.

Alchemy, for one, was a subject she knew she could easily get an O in. All it required was precision and patience and for the theoretical part, a good memory. Unlike potions, the ingredients were of the Muggle sort and Stephanie knew that was a part that might be a bit more challenging, especially remembering and getting all the spelling correct. Why did they have to have such complicated names for chemicals?

She greeted Professor Waters with a smile and headed to a table near the side of the room. It looked like the other students were already hard at work so Stephanie began, making sure that her robes didn't get in the way of the chemicals. She got out the weighing scale and set the beaker on it, ensuring that it was at 0.00 grams. Carefully, she spooned the thymolphthalein into the beaker, a tiny bit at a time until the number on the scale was 0.10. She lifted the beaker off the scale then debated between using the pipette or the measuring cylinder for the alcohol. Deciding that the pipette was too much work, she poured the ethyl alcohol into the measuring cylinder, getting down on eye level to read the meniscus.

After adding the alcohol into the beaker, she stirred it until the powder dissolved. Next, she took out a clean measuring cylinder and filled it to 90 mL with water, again looking at the meniscus to get the right reading. She added that into the beaker and stirred. Taking a dropper, she added twenty drops of the sodium hydroxide to the beaker, watching as the solution turned blue. Using another dropper, she put a few drops of the ink onto a piece of cloth, and waited the three minutes out, seeing the blue slowly fade away.

Done with the instructions, she transferred the ink into an air tight vial and sat down, waiting to see if there was anything else.

Posts : 1363 Join date : 2015-12-20

Admin Closure of Class.

Thank you to those who have posted in this class - unfortunately the professor cannot finish up the class, so an admin will close it. Points will be given as follows:

10 points for attendance
5 points for any question being answered
Up to 15 points for participation in class

Thank you for your participation - this will still count as one of your three classes.

If you have any questions in regards to the points being handed out (either as a student or professor) please contact myself or another admin via PM to discuss them.

House Points
Cora Jackson = 10 points for attendance + 10 points for participation = 20 points.
Ceyal Kalhoun = 10 points for attendance
Clara Goldstein = 10 points for attendance + 10 points for participation = 20 points.
Stephanie Richardson = 10 points for attendance + 5 points for particpation = 15 points.

TOTAL:
Gryffindor: 0
Hufflepuff: 20
Ravenclaw: 30
Slytherin: 15