As you may have guessed by the title, I broke a piece of glassware today. A 15 mL round bottom flask. I was trying to clean it, and I was nearly finished when I dropped it in the sink. Today was day three in the lab; I'm surprised I lasted this long without breaking anything.
Yesterday, I ran a couple of reactions, and today we began the analysis of the product. I used the High Pressure Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) to separate the purified reaction mixture into three fractions for each reaction. They are drying on the vacuum of the schlenk line overnight, and we will take the NMR of the unknowns. At this point it is safe to say that we got what we wanted, which is a good start. But we've got a long way to go.
Tomorrow, one of the group members is defending her thesis, so I get to see my first doctoral defense. A preview of coming attractions, I suppose.
The strawberry festival is also tomorrow, so I hope I get to go out there for a bit and enjoy some shortcake!
MMMMM
ReplyDeleteStrawberry shortcake! I hope you can get out to that strawberry festival. It'll be a good break from all of your lab work. Just reading what you're doing sounds confusing and involved to me. You must be some kind of smart! And you must really like science.
Good to hear an update, you hadn't posted in a while.
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Not surprised about the broken glass! But glad to hear that you are enjoying your time in the REU program so far. Hope you got the Strawberry Festival with some of your new REU friends!
ReplyDeleteBest,
Andrew
Listen "Andrew"
ReplyDeleteHow DARE you compromise the sanctity of Rachel's blog by posting this foolish, insincere comment?! You'd best not show your face again round these parts...