Summation

The purpose of this blog post is to literally sum up the whole sabbatical week. So be prepared for a long spam.

Everyday is a rainy day. INCLUDING FRIDAY RAWR.

Since there's rain almost everyday, flag raising sessions are cancelled. So it's more of camp in class and talk about shoddy battle session everyday for flag raising, instead of stoning there and definitely not singing the national anthem.

So the sabbatical I attended was crystal growing. Which literally means growing crystals. You know, the common ones like copper (II) sulfate, alum, lead (II) iodide, silver, chrom alum, potassium chloride and stuff.

Being the student trainer, I got access to cheat codes during the sessions, such as growing crystals beforehand, conduct illegal (in terms of sabbatical schedule) experiments, and use the magnetic stirrer instead of stirring with the glass rod (lololol)

Day 1: Preparation day

Basically the first day everyone is preparing the mother solution and seed crystals for their crystal growing. Every group are required to grow alum crystals. Because me and ruomu (my senior-junior) and ms leong already started growing our alum and copper (II) sulfate weeks ago..so ya, by that time we already have the crystals. Also, due to the fact that we want them to start from scratch, literally, so the groups have to begin by dissolving aluminium in KOH, filter, add sulfuric acid, filter again, heat, and wait for seed crystals to crystallise. Me was amusing myself watching ppl choke on the fumes..

So this is the seed crystals grown by the groups..

Day 2, 3, 4: Wait day

Suddenly lost all the enthusiasm to crap more. So it will just be 'waiting for crystals to grow and do some additional experiments' day. Nevermind a picture says a thousand words.

Chemical garden

Illegal experiment no 1: crystallisation of copper (II) chloride (from scratch)

Copper (II) sulfate from scratch

Lead (II) iodide crystals and silver crystals.

Day 5: Harvest day

So every group harvested their crystals and did a presentation. After that there's this prize presentation for biggest crystal (excluding student trainers'), nicest crystal (excluding student trainers'), best presentation (excluding student trainers'), best lead (II) iodide crystals (excluding student trainers'), best copper (II) sulfate crystals (excluding student trainers'), best crystal garden (excluding student trainers') and best silver crystals (excluding student trainers' once again). So there's wide distribution of kit-kats for the prize winners. It is known some group called group 2 with someone known as soon zhou inside won the most number of prizes, for your information.

Ms Leong giving final presentation.

Last but not least, everyone's crystals. Student trainers' are in the beakers.

So what I felt about the sabbatical would be that it is rather fun, we get to slack, and of course enjoy ourselves. Cheers for crystal growing.