back to beginnings

spent yesterday remaking the product i did the first week of research, so i can have more to work with in the fall. it’s a very nice reaction, gives good amounts of a cheerful, yellow, fluffy-powder product. easy too – just three chemicals, a solvent, stirring overnight, then filtering. not air or water sensitive, which is a welcome change.

also had to continue with my catalyst in the box, removing the solvent by vacuum. ran into a snag in the morning, however, and took the time to clean out the dewar used for the solvent trap:

turns out a lot of ice (which condenses on everything near it) ends up falling into the dewar. it surprised me that such large chunks lasted overnight, when i know the liquid nitrogen didn’t stick around that long.

my product (which i isolated this morning) wasn’t as spectacular as the yellow fluff. despite using larger quantities, i still only have a 5% yield…very disappointing. it might be one of the chemicals that went bad, which would doom the reaction from the start…my advisor said she’d procure a new bottle for me in the fall.

hard to believe it’s the last day of summer research. i’ve been working hard all day trying to get these last few reactions to finish up, and had to fight the glovebox’s fridge to start putting some of the more sensitive chemicals away (like my tiny yield of catalyst)…found out (for future reference) that if you turn the door to the fridge counterclockwise, it loosens it up so that it will close easier. of course, that discovery was only made after i had spent 15 minutes arm-wrestling with the box…the hardest tasks seem to be in the most awkward locations.

~ by scififreaker on 2008.July.3.