Social Studies Connection
For our SS connection, we chose option 5: "How it affected policy and society."
We decided to base my SS connection on catalysts and how they affected our society, and how and why they're important. We chose this option because catalysts (sodium iodide in my case) are an important feature in our project, since that is what causes the hydrogen peroxide to decompose at a fast rate. The discovery of catalysts led to the production of the chemical products we use daily today.
Catalysts are important in many industrial processes which use chemical reactions to turn raw materials into useful products. Therefore, they are essential in making plastics and many other manufactured items.
Almost everything in our daily life depends on catalysts: cars, Post-It notes, magazines, laundry detergent, vinegar, all of the parts of our sandwich—bread, cheddar cheese, roast turkey. They clean contact lenses every night, turn milk into yogurt, and turn petroleum into plastic milk jugs, compact disks, and bicycle helmets.
Most of those things are all essential for our daily lives and are here because of catalysts.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2011-12-catalysis.html
What do catalysts do to our magazines?
Catalysts break down paper pulp to produce the smooth paper in our magazines.
How are catalysts important in making our vinegar?
Vinegar is one of the many things we use in our lives, especially for our salads, and the process of catalysts is used by fermenting wine to make it.
How vinegar is made using a catalyst
Vinegar is made by two biological processes, both the result of the action of harmless microorganisms, yeast (acts as a catalyst) and “Acetobacter”, that turn sugars (carbohydrates) into acetic acid. Many of our favorite foods involve some type of bacteria in their production – from cheese and yogurt to wine, pickles, and chocolate. The first process is called alcoholic fermentation and occurs when the catayst, yeast, changes natural sugars to alcohol under controlled conditions. In the second process, a group of bacteria (called “Acetobacter”) converts the alcohol portion to acid. This is the acetic, or acid fermentation, that forms vinegar.
Source: http://www.versatilevinegar.org/faqs.html
Below is sodium iodide, the catalyst in our experiment. It is what causes the hydrogen peroxide to decompose at a fast rate:
