Hello everyone! My name is Giada Amundson and I am doing organic chemistry at Scripps. This is my 2nd week in the lab. 5 weeks left. I am loving it so far!
Monday, June 19
We had today off work because it is Juneteenth. So we went shopping, and to the beach in La Jolla. It was a super relaxing day, but I am excited to get back to the lab tomorrow, and hopefully get my reaction to work.
Tuesday, June 20
Today when I got to the lab, I had an appointment to get NMR certified. The past times that we have done NMRs, it has been Skyler, my mentor, doing the NMR and I help to analyze it, but now I can run my own NMRs. Then after lunch, we started our reaction again. All last week, we had troubles with it, so today we are using a different solvent. This solvent is very very flammable and can not get exposed to air, so we had to put it under nitrogen pressure to use it. We had to work fast with it, so it was kind of stressful at the moment, but super interesting how some chemicals work like that. Then, we followed our new procedure, and got a liquid. We then used the rotovap to change the liquid to a solid. We still did not get a product from any of the solutions we made. So the rest of the day we just sat there working on various other things. I spent my time learning about stereoisomers. Stereoisomers are molecules with the same chemical formula, but different atomic arrangements.
Wednesday, June 21
We decided today to do control experiments on our reagents. We have tried many experiments with these reagents, but we are not getting a product with any of the reactions we run. So we ran a control experiment on both of them. Both experiments have to run overnight, so I set them up and let them run for the rest of the day. For the rest of the day I was learning about more stereoisomers, such as R and S configurations and Fischer projections. Knowing these will help me in my future here in the lab as well as chemistry classes. At 3 we went to the Scripps Happy Hour, where they had food and drinks and we were able to talk to everyone all across the Scripps campus. My mentor introduced me to some people in other labs, and then we were able to just sit there and talk. Getting to talk to some of the people outside of the chemistry lab was super cool.
scripps research happy hour
Thursday, June 22
I got right to work and finished our control experiments from yesterday. We took NMRs of these samples. Last week, we tested the reagents, just by themselves, and they came out fine, but this time we used a procedure and tested them. One of our solids came out perfect, and the other has an interesting placement on the NMR. We have noticed this spot on every single NMR we have taken in my past experiments, so we know something must be wrong with that chemical. So, I worked up the same reaction again, but this time with a new bottle of phosphonium that just came in. For the rest of the day, we attended a virtual conference. It was called EWOC (Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry). One of the Postdoctorates in my office was presenting at this conference, so we watched some presentations, as well as hers. The topics were super interesting, especially for me, a female student looking into majoring in Organic Chemistry.
Friday, June 23
I had a feeling that today would be the day that we get our perfect product. I filtered and rotovapped the liquid down that we had let sit overnight. I then got to use my own NMR account for the first time to see if this time we would get our product. And guess what. We did it. I finally got my product! I was so amazed and happy to get the product that we wanted. We then went to a seminar where a professor from MIT presented chemical ways to get rid of plastic waste. That was a super interesting seminar. At 2, we had our weekly group meeting where we got to present about getting our product. Other people in the lab also presented new research papers and we all discussed them. After the meeting, Skyler and I talked about what we are going to start doing next week with our product.
The Pinterns I’m living with and I had a fire where we made smores and just got to know each other better.
NMR with product
Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25
On Saturday, we went to the same beach that we went to on Monday, which is a calmer beach with a lot less people. We all got in the ocean, and then just relaxed there the rest of the day. We went to the beach again that night, and watched a beautiful sunset. Now on Sunday, we are having a chill day again. We may go shopping for a little bit, and then we plan to watch the sunset again tonight.
There are no comments published yet.