Hello everyone! My name is Giada Amundson and I am doing organic chemistry at Scripps. This is my 5th week in the lab with 2 weeks left. I can’t believe that it is almost over!
Monday, July 10
This morning, I took the mass of the Wittig product I made on Friday, and got a good yield on it. I also took NMRs of both the E and Z isomers. The Z isomer is completely clean and looks super good, while the E isomer has a little bit of another product still attached, so we will have to run another column on the E to get it completely clean. My mentor had a meeting, so I just learned about some different types of reactions and other mechanisms. After lunch, I ran the column to get the E isomer completely clean and pure. I recrystallized the E and Z isomers. I didn’t get a lot of product from the E isomer, so I’m not going to be able to continue with that one to my final reaction of this project, but I will do the Z isomer, and hopefully get a good product from that.
Tuesday, July 11
Today was not super busy for me in the lab. I wrote the procedure to make my final product. I followed my procedure to make the final product I needed. Then I ran a lot of TLC plates throughout the day. A TLC plate is how I can easily check if your reaction is finished or not. When you run the plate and there is no more of the starting material, then you know you have completed the reaction. I also watched a couple of videos to improve my knowledge of some aspects of chemistry. Today, I learned about E1 and E2 reactions, as well as Newman projections. E1 and E2 are elimination reactions. This means that you eliminate a bond, and it becomes a double bond. Newman projections are how you can check if you did the correct mechanism of the E1 or E2 reaction.
Wednesday, July 12
I got to the lab today, and yesterday when I checked my reaction before I went home, it was still not finished, so I took another TLC plate on the reaction this morning, and it was still not done. While I let it stir more, my mentor gave me practice problems on the E1 and E2 reactions that I was learning about yesterday. Then once the reaction was done, I used a separatory funnel to separate my product from the mixture of solvents used. This makes sure that you get all the product you need, but that it is also cleaner too. My product is in the top layer of the funnel because it is less dense than the solvent. Then I rotovapped all of the product down to get a solid, and that is what I will use tomorrow in the reaction with adding the copper.
separator funnel
Thursday, July 13
My mentor explained what I will be trying to achieve here now that we have our final product. We are going to use a copper catalyst with our reaction and test certain types of catalysis and different ligands. A catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction, and a ligand is a molecule that binds to the catalysis and can change the way that it reacts. I also got trained on how to use the glove box. The glove box is where you can mix chemicals that can not be exposed to air in a box full of nitrogen. Then I set up my final reaction mixed with copper catalysis in the box. This reaction was on a small scale, so I had to be very precise with the amount, which is even more difficult in the glove box because you have very large butyl rubber gloves over your regular gloves. I set up that reaction and let it stir overnight.
nitrogen filled glovebox
Friday, July 14
I started my day by checking on the reaction that stirred overnight. We are trying to see if this reaction results in a Z and E isomer, or if it is just a single isomer of the product. We took an NMR yield on the product, and to us right now, it looks like there is just one isomer, so that is really good, and will be easier to set up next week in another reaction. We then had our weekly group meeting again today. Some of the new students presented their previous research, and another member presented literature. After the group meeting, I completed my biweekly update. After I finished that, there was another happy hour for the whole chemistry department, so I attended that with my mentor.
After work, we went to a Japanese cafe where they served Kakigori, which is like Japanese-style shaved ice. It was so good, and then we had a chill night and watched our favorite show.
kakigori
Saturday and Sunday, July 15 and 16
On Saturday, we woke up super early and went to the beach to watch the sunrise. It was such a peaceful way to start the day. I read for a lot of the day which was nice. We went to an H-Mart and got different items to make for dinner and dessert. It was so fun and delicious. On Sunday, we went to a really good breakfast place and then went shopping in La Jolla for a bit. Now we are just having a chill day, and then we are going to watch the sunset again tonight.
Giada, I loved this blog post, so much going on and so many cool images! Keep up the great work!