"My Chemistry Lab Journal"

Hello everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your thanksgivings (and didn't devour too many poor helpless turkeys)!
If you were unaware of my school situation, I have been in science classes that have involved labs for three years now, and this is what all we scientists wish we could say for our lab reports and journals:

Determining pH Lab

Introduction:

Alright, well in Chemistry, there's this thing called the pH scale. It tell you how acidic or basic stuff is. Most of the time, you know that an acid is acidic and a base is basic; however, in this experiment, we will pretend that we don't know that hydrochloric acid, one of the world's most well-known strong acids, is acidic and test its pH with an indicator thingy. We will use red cabbage water as said indicator thingy.

First off, we must go over all of the precautions:

Make sure you wear goggles, an apron, closed toe shoes, a hair net, a gas mask, rain poncho, chemical suit, bullet proof vest, a sombrero or turban, something patriotic or animal safari-themed, along with one of those cute scarfs with the glitter and fuzzy stuff; all of the these necessary precautions are taken because we are dealing with hydrochloric acid. It doesn't matter if it's been diluted to the same acidity as a can of soda. It is still HYDROCHLORIC ACID! It can still cause an emotionally unstable student to freak out when it is poured on their hands and they are all like "AHHH!!! ACID!!! GET IT OFF!!!" Also, no food or drink is allowed in the lab, as that beaker of Hydrochloric acid may be mistaken for your cheeseburger.

Materials and Methods:

Well, a beaker, a pipette, a graduated cylinder, a stirring rod, an electric stove, water, indoor plumbing, hydrochloric acid, more water, red cabbages, and love, tenderness, and mercy were all used in this experiment. First, pop culture and the difficulty of the homework of other classes were discussed among the students while the teacher prepared the HCl solutions and red cabbage water and tried to get the students to work on their introductions for their lab reports. After the teacher was finished, we all gathered the materials needed for this experiment. 100 mL of red cabbage water was measured into a graduated cylinder, and then 95.4 mL were poured into a beaker, along with 4.6 mL poured onto the table, which was quickly wiped away with a paper towel so the teacher wouldn’t notice. We then recorded our observations. We then pipetted hydrochloric acid into the red cabbage water, and recorded our observations again. We then made one person clean up the mess that our group had made while we discussed our favorite TV shows.

Data and Observations:

Well the first thing that I observed was this one stray mark on the whiteboard, obviously made by a black dry erase marker. This bothered me greatly. I also noticed that some jokester was drinking a soda out of one of the beakers. We quickly confiscated the beaker and scolded him for drinking his soda out of the recently cleaned and sanitized glassware, and reminded him that it is much safer to drink out of the rusty old aluminum cans that soda comes in. I also observed that my fingernails were getting long, and they needed a trim. I then observed the red cabbage water. Unlike its name, the red cabbage water looked sort of purplish: a blend between Barney the dinosaur and a really nasty wart that could be obtained from holding a frog. We were about to smell the cabbage water directly from the beaker, but the teacher nearly forgot to tell us that we should not directly smell the cabbage water. Thanks to her, we all were saved from a near certain death of over-smelling the deadly red cabbage water. Instead, we wafted these possibly harmful gases toward our faces. They smelled bad. Then, as one of my lab partners pipetted the hydrochloric acid into the solution, I observed the clock. There was only twenty more minutes until class was over. I then noticed a color change in the cabbage water. It turned from purplish, to a greenish yellow, almost like the color of the result from that one day when I had a large amount of oatmeal with a large amount of chocolate chips in the morning and transferred it onto the carpet of a movie theater later that afternoon. When this fluid was wafted, it possessed the same stench of the initial solution.

Analysis:

Okay, so, apparently, according to our teacher, there is no way that the red cabbage water would have turned green if we had done the experiment correctly. Nonetheless, it did turn green after we added the acid.

Conclusion:

From this experiment. We have learned about two things. The first thing is about pH. We have finally discovered for ourselves that acids are, well, acidic, and that they change the color of cabbage water. This will definitely help up later in life whenever we run out of green paint for a face painting station at a carnival. We can simply brew some cabbage water, add some hydrochloric acid, and now have a fresh supply of bright green, albeit extremely corrosive and acidic, face paint. The second thing that we learned was man's sinful nature. If man was truly perfect, then the cabbage water probably would have turned red like it was supposed to.

Now, we must discuss sources of error. There are many possible sources of error that I might have turned the   cabbage water green. It might be from when we spilled the cabbage water on the table. It might be from when we roughly guesstimated the amount of acid that we should have used. Then again it might also be from when that jokester put food coloring in our beaker...

The End.

I hope you liked it!