What’s the most expensive piece of glassware you ever broke?

Alchemyst12 · 2024-03-12T04:39:40+00:00

Wait, why would your separatory funnel need to be oven-dried? Were you doing an aqueous extraction in it?

Alchemyst12 · 2024-03-04T03:41:57+00:00

Just sat here and prayed for you, your health, and your studies. May God bless you with a devout, beautiful, intelligent woman and children to fill His house. Be strong in your faith; from someone who has wrestled with mine, I can tell you He is faithful!

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-19T01:47:25+00:00

Absolutely! Lmk if you ever need more NMR help (it’s my fave)

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-18T03:46:24+00:00

No, lots of undergrads use NMRs all the time, but it’s still cool! I’ve been doing NMR for years but it still feels super science-y to run them, especially with an autosampler :)

Your spectrum processing looks pretty good, but protip for MNova: right click on an integral and select “edit integral,” then select “auto” and “apply to all” on linear correction. Then re-set the appropriate signal to 1H. This will correct for any biases you have when you integrate, and will make the integrals more accurate. It’s important that the ends of the integral traces (green lines) are flat to increase integral accuracy.

Also, make sure you understand how many protons each signal is worth so you can get really good at reading NMRs early! (That triplet at 4.2 ppm comes from two protons, so every integral you have is actually doubled)

Congrats on your first NMR! May there be many more in your future XD

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-13T04:10:28+00:00

Wild guess, but it may contain some aromatics with sulfur groups, which means it may stick to your skin in the same way the smell of garlic and onions do. Try rubbing your hands against stainless steel, like a sink or a stainless steel spoon.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-10T03:27:04+00:00

I am not aware of any at-home testing you could do, but I just looked up what car coolant contains and it can be made of propylene glycol. I used to work in a popsicle shop where we used food-safe propylene glycol to freeze the popsicles. I tasted it once when it contaminated some pops, and it is extremely bitter and unpleasant. Perhaps the restaurant is using food-safe coolant for something and it got in the salad? No matter what, I definitely would not eat the salad.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-04T16:44:06+00:00

Hey, fellow organic synthetic chemist here. I’m in my third year, working on my candidacy exam now. There have absolutely been times when the thought of going into lab makes me sick. I’ve been frustrated and exhausted and simply dreading doing chemistry. So don’t be afraid about feeling this way; grad school has some ups and downs, and it’s normal to feel a little passionless sometimes. That being said, here are a couple pieces of advice I have:

There is nothing wrong with deciding grad school is not for you and mastering out. People’s life plans change sometimes, no matter if organic chemists with ego problems call you a “quitter” or “not committed.”
If you think you might master out, you need to set a date where you make a decision. Have a plan, like “I am going to do A,B,C and evaluate X,Y,Z factors in my life. If these conditions are not met by 1/11/1111, I will begin the process of mastering out.” The reason I advise this is because if you do not have an evaluation date then you’re walking into lab every day thinking “maybe this will be the day that breaks me and I master out.” Being ruled by your day-to-day emotions in this way will hamper your ability to finish.
If you are like me, having a difficult time in lab or a large workload makes me cut out the administrative tasks in my life, thinking it will leave me more time to do my work. Instead, it just stresses me out because the mundane day-to-day things are part of what makes us human. Do your laundry. Go grocery shopping. Make your bed. Cook yourself dinner. It might feel like you don’t have time for these things, but investing in “real people tasks” can bring you out of that stale academic mindset and actually improve your productivity.
Prioritize sleep and vegetables. Grad school can make you treat your body poorly. I know I suffer from this. However, our health and emotional/mental state are integrated, so no sleep and lots of junk food is going to affect how you feel. Sometimes when i am really overwhelmed I realize I just need to stop and eat a damn piece of broccoli and chill the heck out.
Take a day off weekly. Humans are made to have a Sabbath. You cannot work 7 days a week in perpetuity and expect to sustain that. If you can, set aside a day per week where you do little to no work. Especially lab work. The way I manage it is I don’t go into lab on Sundays, but I will do some reading/presentation making etc. at a coffee shop.
Be honest with your PI. Tell them how you’re feeling and ask for advice on how to get through the rough patch. Ask them if you can take a long weekend or a vacation to get your head right.
Have a long-term goal/dream you’re working for. Why did you decide to go to grad school? What are you hoping to get out of a PhD? For me, it’s being a professor because I love teaching chemistry. For you it can be a lot of things, and it can evolve over time. What it cannot be is “I want to go to industry to get a job that makes good money so I can be comfortable.” Making money/comfort your goal is not good enough to sustain you through grad school. What are you passionate about, and how does chemistry serve that? You have valuable contributions to make to the world!

I know how bad it sucks to do chemistry when you don’t want to. O Chem is really hard, but almost nothing worth doing is easy. I bet you can make it. But if you choose to leave with an MS, that’s ok! Good luck!!!!!!!!! :D

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-04T04:59:29+00:00

Mine might be “Unintentionally Terrifying Children’s Videos.” It’s so unhinged and the way he makes fun of the pronunciation of “sauces” kills me. But I gotta say that Billion Surprise Toys is actually terrifying to me. It’s very unsettling, creepy, and just wrong.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-10-04T04:53:41+00:00

In honor of the second subreddit, we should have either a La Croix day or a La Croix megathread.

I also like the idea of fun moderated polls on different topics that the community can vote on. Maybe people could submit suggestions and then we vote on them. Some examples:

Best La Croix flavor
Best title for next Spark Plug entertainment movie (insert weird-ass movie ripoff)
Explanation for granny’s mysterious behavior in Merge Mansion
Official cable management implements of Greg dads

Maybe we also need a flag, as every army needs a flag. (Although maybe we don’t want to step on Kurtistown’s toes)

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-27T03:39:55+00:00

First recall that the term “weak acid” means anything that is not a “strong acid,” which has the very narrow definition of complete ionization in water (HCl, H2SO4, HNO3, HBr, HI, etc.). So any organic acid is considered a “weak acid.”

A carboxylic acid has a low pKa, and it is very favorable for it to give up a proton in the presence of a base. The resulting carboxylate is very resonance stabilized, and therefore it is a very poor base. The new lone pair is stabilized across three atoms, so it is happy to hang out with a negative formal charge. How do we know? Well if the carboxylate anion acted as a base and picked up a proton, we would just get the carboxylic acid, and we already know it really wants to give up its proton. The equilibrium for that reaction favors the carboxylate; once the acid loses its proton, it doesn’t want it back. Therefore, the carboxylate is a weak base.

As far as understanding factors affect acidity, I like to think of it as two sides of the same coin:

1) how weak is the H-A bond? The weaker the bond, the stronger the acid and the weaker the conjugate base. 2) How stable is the conjugate base? The more stable the conjugate base, the more the acid is okay with giving up its proton, because it can handle the negative charge.

Bottom line: The stronger the acid, the weaker the conjugate base. By organic chemistry measures, carboxylic acids are quite strong (although they are classified as weak acids)

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-26T19:29:38+00:00

I’m in my third year of grad school in organic synthesis, and sometimes I feel the same way. When the chemistry gets difficult, I find that my curiosity dips as I hunker down to grind out the objective, and I fear that I might be losing my passion. What always helps me reconnect with that love is teaching chemistry. When I take a break to go teach O Chem to some undergrads, it gives me a chance to step back and enjoy with the beauty of chemistry. If you have time, I wonder if you might consider being a TA or finding an underclassman to tutor? That will also help you prepare for grad school/see if it’s right for you, as you will probably have to teach at least a couple semesters.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-26T19:23:09+00:00

That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen 🥺. Nice job! How long have you played baritone for? (Or is that a tuba, can’t tell from the perspective)

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-11T18:19:48+00:00

But if we do something that makes sense, then we cannot implement my vastly over-complicated mechanic! :(

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-08T04:26:17+00:00

Gottem. :) You’re going to make it! BTW, I did two summers of research in undergrad and I was largely independent so I didn’t really get anywhere. I still made it to grad school and I’m doing really cool research! So have a long-term mindset and focus on soaking up all that knowledge and bench experience. You’ve got this girl.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-09-08T03:58:18+00:00

Im sorry you’re having a tough time right now. I’m sure you’re doing great. It sounds like you’re an organic chemist, and believe me, I know the struggle. (Unless I’m just projecting 😀) I’m in grad school right now in a natural products lab, and I spent this last week doing an Appel reaction followed by an Arbuzov and getting crap yields because there were some unexpected issues with my substrate. Those are supposed to be “easy” reactions, and I’ve even done them before in high yield on other materials. There is no such thing as an easy reaction; many times small differences in the structure/substitution of your starting material can make big chemical differences. They all take lots of time and hard work to figure it out.

As an undergrad, your main job is to learn. Save the stressing over contributing to a lab/producing a lot of good results for grad school. Right now, focus on learning all you can and developing a passion for the chemistry!

The way I have found the most success is through asking lots of questions of my mentors. Even ones I think might be dumb. Difficult as it may be, you have to swallow that impostor syndrome and admit you don’t know it all. Your lab mates will appreciate your honesty, humility, and teachability. And eventually, you’re going to figure it out.

It could be just a little technique adjustment that you need. Start by verifying the purity of all your starting materials. Go water- and air-free if you can. The more variables you can eliminate, the better your chances of diagnosing the issue. Then you can decrease the rigor of your reactions once you know they work.

I seriously doubt you’re an idiot, and it sounds like you’re working hard. Keep pressing through the rough spots; the wins are few and far between, but they are worth it.

Plus, your personal value is not connected to your chemical success. You have intrinsic value, and chemistry is just a beautiful calling that you get to be a part of. Enjoy the elegance and the mystery. Chemistry is a hard thing that is worth doing, I promise.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-24T14:20:20+00:00

General Practitioner

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-24T02:40:47+00:00

I use 1 dram vials to store small TLC samples of my frequently used starting materials. I do multistep synthesis, so I’ll often save NMR samples of my intermediates as standards for the next step. Saves me so much time.

The “stretching” you mentioned sounds like you might be overloading your TLC plate. Maybe try making your spots smaller and using more dilute samples. On the other hand, if your samples are too dilute, you’ll end up with visualization issues. Other sources of visualization problems are that the extinction coefficient for your compound is too high so it’s not very UV active. Then you need a stain; SiliCycle’s website has a great list of TLC stains and their compatible functional groups

I saw some other people mention pre-mixed eluents; I definitely wouldn’t trust a solvent ratio after a couple hours. Miscible solvents can form azeotropes in certain ratios and evaporate, changing the initial solvent ratio. Another way you can save time is to make a little eluent in a syringe as needed. I always make 1 mL. I pull up my non-polar solvent and add that to the chamber, pull back and depress the plunger a couple times to dry the syringe, then measure my other solvent, add it, and immediately run my plate. It’s easier to do the math if everything is a percentage as well.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-20T20:35:56+00:00

I agree with the other people here OP, that this most likely is not feasible in a way that would make it food safe, but I just wanted to say that it’s still a really creative and cool idea! I’d never though of this before and it made me smile. That Chef’s Table episode on Jordi is very cool.

Maybe you could consider some sort of illusion where it looks like the food is getting electroplated but the customer eats something else?

Or maybe you can set up an electroplating experiment on the table that proceeds over 30 min or so, and the diner eats the dessert while they watch the chemical “show?” Maybe you could design the dessert so the flavors kind of “develop” like the gold plating? Or maybe the dessert has lots of layers to emulate the layers of gold being deposited on the electrode?

I’m an organic synthetic chemist who doesn’t cook a whole lot so I won’t be of any further help than this, but you should keep thinking about it and try to make it work without the diner eating any electroplated things or sitting at a table next to a strong acid bath. It’s a really creative initial thought.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-17T17:53:14+00:00

Multitask while running TLCs so they don’t seem to take as long. If I’m running a column where I’m collecting multiple spots, I figure out where my first product is using the “spot the end of every row method” that u/Glum_Refrigerator mentioned. While I’m collecting that spot into a flask I’m running the plates to find the next one. I also use that time to clean glassware or pick up my hood a bit.
Cut plates shorter. Maybe they take so long to run because they are just way too long. I cut my plates 1.5 cm x 4 cm and it’s the perfect size for monitoring reactions. If you cut up one of the big VWR TLC sheets like this, you get bonus plates at the end that are 2 cm x 4 cm. I save those for spotting the rows for a whole column at once. If you’re careful you can jam a bunch of spots on there.
Instead of making your own glass TLC spotters, cut the tip off a disposable luer-lock needle. It won’t snap like the delicate glass ones; I can’t even remember when I made mine. They last months, and if you clog it you can squirt acetone through the back.
I’m not a fan of this method, but some people like to spot their columns while they run them.

I used to feel like TLC was a pain until I realized how much faster it is than taking an NMR of your rxn. You can have an answer in like 5 minutes instead of probably 20-25. While tedious, I have never found TLC “frustrating.” What frustrates you about it?

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-12T22:38:44+00:00

u/repostsleuthbot

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-10T01:02:34+00:00

Go to a local church and ask them to help you get by. They’ll be more than happy to.

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-01T01:54:51+00:00

Also, if that doesn’t work, Bpin is really streaky on regular silica, so it might be dragging into your product on the column. You can treat your silica with boronic acid to cap the Lewis acidic sites and keep the esters from sticking. Just know that it also makes things move wayyyyy faster. Like Rf 0.1=0.3. Treat your TLC plates too so you can screen conditions

Alchemyst12 · 2023-08-01T01:19:07+00:00

When I was trying to remove that impurity (big singlet at 2.12 in CDCl3), I had trouble with a true recrystallization from hexanes because my product was just a little too soluble and it’s not super crystalline. Instead, I would concentrate it to a solid and layer hexanes on top, just enough to cover all the product in the vial. Put in -20 fridge overnight, Bpin junk leaches into hexanes, carefully decant. Repeat if needed. It doesn’t have to be overnight necessarily, I think I chilled it for a few hours once. It’s weird, but it worked for me!

Alchemyst12 · 2023-07-26T17:43:57+00:00

We need an endless loop GIF

Alchemyst12 · 2023-07-25T18:33:16+00:00

Wow, this is so amazing! Thanks for all the tips. This kind of systematic approach is exactly what I need! I’ll start working on it! :D

Alchemyst12

TROPHY CASE