The Future of Education

As 11’th grade AP Chemistry students, we conducted an experiment in the hopes of diminishing the horrid effects of the usage of carbon-based fuel. This non-renewable resource induces irreversible impacts on the environment that scar numerous creatures. We hoped to investigate an alternative method to this harmful resource. Therefore, we conducted an experiment which underscores the necessity of the usage and production of bioethanol. In this scientific experiment, we aimed to extract ethanol from root vegetables such as potato, radish, onion, beetroot, and ginger. This experiment had two stages. The first step was to extract water soluble glucose from these root vegetables. For this stage, we heated the root vegetables for 30 minutes in a domestic pressure cooker until the outcome of the water soluble sugar was maximized (100°C). The aliquot and the solid that was achieved at the end of heating was transferred into a 50mL volumetric flask, which was filled with distilled water. The remaining solid was filtered using a filter paper. Our knowledge about molarity, boiling point, fractional distillation.gas chromatography and solubility aided us through our experiment. However, we used methods such as gas chromatography and fractional distillation to further aid our project. These methods were methods that required lab work to be understood. Even though our knowledge of concepts and theories from our AP Chemistry class was essential in our experiment, a part of this experiment simply required hands on lab activity. The second stage of the experiment, which was the extraction of ethanol from glucose, required us to work with complex equipments that we have heard about from our classes but were unable to fully comprehend just through their theoretical description. That is why the usage of gas chromatography and fractional distillation in our experiment caused us to research and understand a theoretical topic through scientific experimentation and application. At the end of our project, we found that practicing and applying the topics we learned in class enhanced our understanding and expertise on our AP course. Furthermore, we realized the significance of our studied topics since we demonstrated our knowledge in a beneficial experiment for the human kind.

Keywords: gas chromatography, fractional distillation, theoretical topics, scientific experimentation, bioethanol.