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Spectrum of a Glow Stick

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Every year seems to always bring new attitudes and new trends. A new trend that students enjoy is Tik Tok. Tik Tok can provide teachers with new, fun, and interesting content that can drive learning. In our previous chapter, chemistry students were learning about the electromagnetic spectrum and how elements and different compounds give off different emission spectrums. We used Chemiluminescence to investigate how excited electrons give of colors. Chemiluminescence is a chemical reaction that causes a release of energy in the form of light. To produce this light the electrons in the chemicals become excited and rise to a higher energy level. When they go back to their original level, we see the colors given off by the glow stick. To investigate the emission spectrum of a glow stick, the students were going to have to do a little dissection to get their glow stick to get the contents separated into two different beakers. After the glow stick was cut open and the glass cylinder was broken, students separated the hydrogen peroxide and tert-butyl alcohol into the separate beakers. Students had to then make quantitative and qualitative observations about the two liquids. Next, they poured the two liquids into the same beaker and used a spectroscope to observe the emission spectrum of the light given off by the glow stick. Students then wrote down the colors they saw in the tube and finished the rest of their lab after dipping some objects into the solution and tried writing with those objects. The great thing about social media is using things seen on platforms like Tik Tok that can drive their learning and peak their interest.