Our project was about how to make a ductile, durable and strong glass. We found out that polycarbonate glasses were glasses with all of these characteristics. This is a timeline of our progress and research in Genius Hour.
Week 1: We needed a driving question and topic that would match both of our interests. We wanted to know how to make a stronger glass with chemical bonding and reactions.
Week 2: We start looking for a mentor and type an email about our project.
Week 3: after 3 mentors don't respond, we send an email to the university of Akron and Professor of polymer science agrees to help us.
Week 4: We ask questions about how we can make a strong glass that doesn't melt at room temperature and also can be slightly flexible.
Week 5: Our mentor replies that polycarbonate bisphenol-A is the best glass we would want. We start researching about the glass and find very confusing formulas.
Week 6: We find something called benzene hexagons that confuse us even more, but now we think we know what the hexagons in the formulas mean. We didn't know covalent bonds yet making us question why the valence electrons are not filling up in each atom in ionic bonds.
Week 7: We are taught covalent bonds and now get most of each formula. We do the math on each and it adds up on the second, but we are still questioning the first.
Week 8: We find out that the phenol and phenylene hexagons are part of a larger group that are special bonds between carbon and hydrogen and sometimes oxygen. These are the correct hexagons instead of benzene hexagons. We now know why it is called bisphenol-A (bi means two and phenol is the group. Two phenol.)
week 9: We see that polycarbonate glass is used for sunglasses, car windows, bulletproof windows and greenhouse screening. We see that there are many types of polycarbonates and that polycarbonate is also partly made of plastic. We research into what it is used for and find it is actually one of the strongest glasses out there
Conclusion: We have learned so much from this project. Not only on how to make a special glass that is formed and designed to take huge impact from items, we learned about phenol groups that are special covalent bonds from elements like hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, and then we understood more about covalent bonds. We got extra practice from doing the single and double bonds in the formulas and doing the math of the valence electrons. Now we know another big step into chemistry science.