West Lothian Council
Lorna C. Webster
1
What is a drug?????
Read
Most young people think that drugs are chemicals that people
take that cause addiction but not all drugs cause addiction.
A drug is a substance that changes the way that the body
works.
Some drugs are beneficial for
example we take drugs called
medicines to treat
headaches/colds/flu and more
serious illnesses are treated with
drugs in hospitals.
Some drugs can cause damage to our health because they can
affect the body and our lifestyle.
Some drugs damage certain organs of the body. Alcohol is a
drug that is especially bad for our liver and
brain. Caffeine is a drug that can be found
in tea, coffee,
chocolate and many
fizzy drinks. It can
affect our heart and brain.
Nicotine is a drug that is
found in cigarettes. It
affects our lungs and brain.
When a people can’t manage without taking a drug this is called
addiction. The lifestyle of someone addicted to drugs is often
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different to their lifestyle before they
were addicted. Someone addicted to
drugs may start to have problems with
work. They may even commit crime to
make sure that they are able to buy the drug they are addicted
to.
Write a heading and try the work below.
1. What is a drug?
2. Why can some drugs be beneficial?
3. Why can some drugs damage our health?
4. Which organs in your body would be affected by drinking too
much alcohol?
5. List some of the foods or drinks that contain caffeine.
6. How do some people get nicotine into their bodies?
7. What does addiction mean?
8. Give two examples of how drugs can affect a person’s
lifestyle. You can use your own examples if you like.
Lorna C. Webster
3
Making Alcohol
Read
Alcohol is a drug that human beings have been drinking for
thousands of years. It is very simple to make alcohol. All you
need is some carbohydrate (starch or sugar) and a living
organism called yeast.
The starch and sugar use to make alcohol comes
from different plants. Cider is made from apples.
Grapes are used to make wine and
brandy. Barley is used to make whisky
and beer. Some types of vodka are made from
potatoes. Saki is a drink from Japan and it is
made from rice.
Yeast is a tiny living organism that contains special substances
called enzymes that turn the sugar into an alcohol called
ethanol. You should know that an enzyme is the scientific word
for a catalyst that is found in living things.
Your teacher may show you how to make alcohol from sugar and
yeast.
Delivery
tube
limewater
Sugar solution
and yeast
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After a few days in a warm place, the limewater turned cloudy
and the solution in the flask smelled of alcohol. This means
that two new substances have been made. The type of
chemical reaction to turn glucose into ethanol is called a
fermentation reaction.
Write a heading and do the work below.
1. Why do you think people thousands of years ago were able to
make alcohol even though they did not know chemistry?
2. Draw a table to show types of alcohol and the plant it is made
from.
3. What is yeast?
4. What is the substance in yeast that turns sugar into alcohol?
5. What is an enzyme?
6. What is the name of the alcohol that yeast makes?
7. Copy the diagram of the experiment for making ethanol.
8. When the ethanol was made, the limewater turned cloudy so
what else is made in the reaction.
9. What is the name of this type of reaction?
10. You should know how to write word equations for chemical
reactions. We know in the fermentation reaction that
glucose turns into two new substances. Copy and complete
the equation below.
Glucose
Lorna C. Webster
___________ +
5
____________
____________
Reactions so far
For your exam, you will need to learn the names of seven
chemical reactions. You have now learned all seven.
 Neutralisation is reacting an acid to make water.
 Combustion is the same as burning in oxygen.
 Cracking is breaking up big hydrocarbon molecules into
smaller, more useful ones.
 Polymerisation is the reaction for making plastics, starch
and protein.
 Photosynthesis is when green plants make glucose and
oxygen.
 Respiration is when living things use glucose and oxygen
for energy.
 Fermentation is when yeast turns glucose into ethanol
and carbon dioxide.
Write a heading and copy the revision box above into your
jotter. Use a colouring in pencil to shade in the box to make it
stand out.
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6
Types of alcoholic drinks
Read
You might already know that different alcoholic drinks have
different concentrations of alcohol.
Name of
drink
wine
brandy
beer
whisky
vodka
cider
rum
alcohol
content
(%)
11
40
4
40
40
5
40
Write a heading and try the work below.
Collect half a sheet of graph paper and draw a bar graph to
show the information about the drinks in the table. Remember
the rules for drawing graphs:
 Start in the bottom left hand corner.
 Work out your scale to make sure you use more than half of
the paper.
 Label the axes using the headings in the table.
 Draw your bars in the correct places.
Get your teacher to check your graph to see if you have
achieved 100% then stick it into your jotter.
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The yeast problem
Read
The problem with yeast is that it can only make ethanol
concentrations up to about 14%. This is because the ethanol
kills the yeast if the concentration gets too high.
So how do we make concentrated spirits like whisky
and vodka that have 40-50% ethanol in them???
It takes a little more chemistry to find
the answer. We need to find a way to
separate the ethanol from the water. You know that
we use a process called filtration to separate a solid
from a liquid but can you remember what the
process is called for separating different
liquids?????
Look at the clue below:
 alcohol and water can be separated because have
different boiling points. Ethanol boils at 79C water
boils at 100C.
Watch your teacher demonstrate how to separate alcohol and
water. This process is called distillation and is possible because
the ethanol and water have different boiling points.
Write a heading and try the work below.
1. Explain why yeast cannot make alcoholic drinks with
concentrations of higher than 14%.
2. What is the name of the process used to separate a solid
from a liquid?
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3. What is the name of the process that is used to separate
liquids that have different boiling points?
4. Can you think of another substance that is a mixture and is
separated by distillation (hint: think back to unit 2)?
5. Collect the distillation diagram, label it with the labels below
and stick it into your jotter.
alcohol and water mixture
thermometer
condenser
concentrated alcohol
bunsen burner
6. At what temperature did the mixture in the demonstration
boil?
7. What did you notice about the smell of the liquid that was
made compared to the mixture that we started with?
8. Why do you think the buildings where whisky is made are
called distilleries?
9. Some drinks are made using fermentation by yeast but
others need to be made by fermentation and distillation.
Look back at the last graph that you did (alcoholic drinks and
% ethanol). Which drinks must have been made by
fermentation and distillation? Explain your answer.
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9
Another way to talk about alcohol
Read
Many people drink alcohol. Alcohol is
a drug because it changes how the
body works. If people take too much
alcohol it can be dangerous. You
already know that alcohol can cause
problems like violence, drink driving
and liver disease. If alcohol is taken
too often it can cause a person to
become an alcoholic. Drink driving
causes many deaths each year.
This means that there are guidelines for how much alcohol is
safe to drink and laws about safe limits for driving. To make it
easy for people to understand, doctors don’t talk about
percentages of alcohol. They talk about units of alcohol.
The alcohol that people drink does not stay in our bodies
forever because our liver destroys it. It takes about 1 hour
for every unit of alcohol we drink to be destroyed. If
someone drinks alcohol very late at night, their liver might not
have destroyed all of it by the morning. This is why some
people get caught drink driving in the morning after because
they think they are not over the limit.
Write a heading and try the work below.
1. What are the problems that alcohol can cause?
2. Why do you think there are laws about drink driving?
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3. Why do you think guidelines for safe limits talk about units
and not percentages?
4. Collect the information card called “units of alcohol” and
draw a table to show the information that is on the card.
5. What part of our body destroys alcohol?
6. How long does it take for
a) one unit to be destroyed?
b) three units to be destroyed?
c) a pint of beer to be destroyed?
7. A group of four people went out to the pub and had a few
drinks. Copy and complete the table below by working out
how many units they drank and how long it would take for the
alcohol to be destroyed.
Name
drinks drank
Paul
1 glass of wine + 1
brandy
2 glasses of wine +
one vodka
1 whisky + 2 pints
of beer
Half pint of lager
+ 2 alcopops + 1
bacardi
Sarah
Joe
Moira
total units
drank
time to be
destroyed
in hours
8. What is the name of the person who might still be over the
drink driving limit in the morning?
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11
Another alcohol
Read
The alcohol that is in alcoholic drinks is called ethanol but there
are many different types of alcohol. Methanol is another
alcohol but methanol is very toxic. It can cause blindness and
even death. Methanol is a colourless liquid that looks like water
so it can be dangerous if people think it is
water and drink it. Substances that contain
methanol like methylated spirits have colour
added to them and chemicals added that taste
bad to help stop people drinking them by
mistake.
Write a heading and try the work below.
1. What is the name of the alcohol that is in alcoholic drinks?
2. What is the name of another alcohol?
3. Methanol is toxic. What is another word that means the
same as toxic?
4. If a person drinks methanol by mistake what might happen to
them?
5. Is Methanol a drug? Explain your answer.
6. Write down the name of a household substance that contains
methanol.
7. What is done to make sure that people do not drink
methylated spirits by mistake?
8. Look at the hazard symbols that are below. Pick the one you
would put on a bottle of methanol or methylated spirits and
draw it into your jotter.
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9. Look at the molecules below that show methanol and ethanol.
H
H
C
O
methanol
H
H
H
H
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
H
C
C
H
H
O
H
ethanol
Copy the two molecules and write the formula beside them.
List the names of the elements that are in alcohols.
Which alcohol has the biggest molecules?
Which alcohol will have the highest boiling point?
You should remember from unit 2 that there are
compounds in chemistry called hydrocarbons. Alcohols
contain hydrogen and carbon but why can we not call then
hydrocarbons?
Lorna C. Webster
13
Drugs and the law
Read
Some drugs are legal and other drugs are illegal. People who
sell illegal drugs or
take illegal drugs
can get into trouble
with the police.
Even just having
illegal drugs can be
illegal. This is called
possession of drugs.
Medicines, alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are drugs that people
take that are legal. Some illegal drugs are cannabis, ecstasy,
LSD, cocaine and heroin.
Addiction
Addiction happens when a person cannot manage without taking
more drugs. There are different types of drugs that people
can get addicted to:




Sedatives for example alcohol
Stimulants for example caffeine
Hallucinogens for example LSD
Painkillers for example heroin
When a person who is addicted tries to give up the drug, they
suffer from withdrawal symptoms. This can be very painful and
distressing.
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Write a heading and try the work below.
1. What does possession of drugs mean?
2. Why do you think that some drugs are illegal?
3. Draw a table to show the names of some drugs and whether
they are legal or illegal.
4. Where would you find the drug called
a) nicotine?
b) caffeine?
5. What does addiction mean?
6. Collect the sheet called “Drugs which are abused” and answer
the questions below.
a) What do sedatives do to the nervous system?
b) Give an example of a drug that is a sedative.
c) What do stimulants do to our reaction speed?
d) Give an example of a drug that is a stimulant.
e) Why do you think a lot of people drink coffee in the
mornings?
f) What does a hallucinogenic drug make us do?
g) Give an example of a hallucinogenic drug.
h) What happens to a person who tries to give up a drug
that they are addicted to?
i)
Make a list of the withdrawal symtoms for a person
trying to come off heroin.
To find out more about the different types of drugs and
whether they are legal or not log on to
http://www.alphischools.org.uk
click on the 14-16 age group
then on biology
then on medicines and drugs
then on drugs of abuse.
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15
Drugs and our bodies
Read
Our bodies keep working because there are chemical reactions
going on inside us all of the time. Sometimes these chemical
reactions go wrong and we can become ill. Medicines are drugs
that help our body when it is not working properly. There are
many different types of medicines.
Medicines often contain many ingredients. The drug that
changes how the body works is called the active ingredient.
Other ingredients are put in for different reasons. For
example a cough mixture does not only contain the drug needed
to stop the cough, it also contains flavourings or sugar to make
it taste nice. Often medicines also contain colourings to make
them look nice.
Write a heading and try the work below.
1. What happens inside our bodies to keep them working?
2. What happens to make us ill?
3. What are drugs called that help our body when it is not
working properly?
4. Collect the information sheet called “types of medicine” and
answer the questions below.
a) What type of drug is taken to kill microorganisms?
b) Give an example of the name of an antiobiotic.
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c)
What is the scientific name for a drug that is a
painkiller?
d) Explain why people were able to take drugs 1000’s of
years ago.
e) Think back to types of chemical reactions. What type
of chemical reaction happens in our stomach when we
take an antacid?
f) What do tranquiliser drugs do?
5. Medicines often contain many ingredients. What is meant by
the active ingredient?
6. Why do medicines often contain many other ingredients?
Ask your teacher if you should try the following tasks:
3.54 – using the internet to find out about different medicines.
3.55 – making wall displays about drugs or finding out how a
breathalyser works.
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