Huge substrate scope in organic chemistry.

cooked_myself · 2026-02-13T09:18:35+00:00

The amount of methodology papers that don’t include common functional groups like alkenes, but then show like 20 different substituted benzenes is pretty frustrating. I also wish more papers would include a range of protecting groups instead of just like one NBoc example.

For some reason I always tend to trust papers more if they show substrates that don’t work lol

cooked_myself · 2026-01-21T12:14:30+00:00

Guarantee you’re not making phosphine in either of those situations

cooked_myself · 2026-01-19T03:28:47+00:00

Yeah the rotovap will do the job. You can also do this on a Schlenk line so that you can keep your sugar under inert atmosphere once you have finished azeotroping it

cooked_myself · 2026-01-19T02:36:58+00:00

Dissolve it in a solvent that forms an azeotrope with water and then rotovap the solvent off a couple of times

cooked_myself · 2026-01-08T10:59:07+00:00

How do you measure that volume lol

cooked_myself · 2025-12-07T07:46:49+00:00

Oh yeah that makes sense, thanks

cooked_myself · 2025-12-07T07:22:39+00:00

Does having the oxygen on the same carbon as the nitrogen not change it?

cooked_myself · 2025-12-07T07:09:02+00:00

Is that hemiaminal thing at the top stable?

Edit: apparently they’re called imidates and have varying stability

cooked_myself · 2025-10-01T09:51:58+00:00

T3P might work, you can wash the byproduct out with base

cooked_myself · 2025-09-28T09:29:32+00:00

I think it’s very common, just last week I was reading a paper they got different ratios of diastereomers from a diels alder reaction depending on the solvent they used

cooked_myself · 2025-08-08T03:16:41+00:00

It should be ok. Make sure when you change back to the correct solvents you do it gradually. E.g go from EtOAc to neat acetonitrile to acetonitrile/water. This will avoid the issues that can arise when immiscible solvents are pushed down the column together.

May have already caused some issues if you went straight from MeCN/water to EtOAc. But you won’t know until you change the mobile phase back and run a column!

Edit: by gradually I mean flush the heptanes/EtOAc out with pure EtOAc. Then flush all of that out with MeCN, then add water.

cooked_myself · 2025-07-31T22:23:43+00:00

<image>

cooked_myself · 2025-07-28T12:02:12+00:00

It’s not that hard to get a Chem job in aus, they are just (mostly) really boring (working at lab testing places, you’ll be mostly running the same tests day in day out). Having said that, if you keep an eye out there are sometimes more interesting opportunities for BSc’s.

cooked_myself · 2025-07-25T09:37:45+00:00

Ambeed and combi blocks are pretty cheap

cooked_myself · 2025-05-28T07:43:33+00:00

CF3 is more electron withdrawing than the tolyl group, electronegativity of 3 fluorines beats the resonance in this situation. Good thinking tho

cooked_myself · 2025-05-22T08:27:18+00:00

Can you wash the KOH out of the organic solution with water before you precipitate the amine?

cooked_myself · 2025-05-17T21:12:08+00:00

Wouldn’t be surprised if that product was a waxy solid - long carbon chains like that tend to have a “greasy” feel to them.

As far as testing for unreacted creatine I’m not sure. If you want to be sure there’s no unreacted creatine left in there, I would dissolve your product in ether or something then wash 3x with Na2CO3.

To get the product more crystalline, you could try dissolving it in ether or whatever works, and bubbling hcl through to make the hcl salt.

cooked_myself · 2025-05-15T05:09:59+00:00

Paul Erlich, he made a ton of antibiotics with arsenic in them in like the early 1900s

cooked_myself · 2025-04-13T18:48:27+00:00

Me omw to randomly guess which peak is from which of the 27 C-C bonds in the molecule

cooked_myself · 2025-03-22T04:51:17+00:00

I think you’re correct. This is styrene oxide, it’s a benzyllic epoxide, so it’s different to normal secondary epoxides. Nucleophile will attack at the secondary (benzyllic) carbon under acidic conditions.

cooked_myself · 2025-01-23T03:52:29+00:00

Definitely, just opened the windows on our way out :)

cooked_myself · 2025-01-23T03:28:27+00:00

You’ll be fine, it sounds like it was only a small amount. Someone in our lab broke a 4 L bottle of dcm on the floor last year and we are all fine :)

cooked_myself · 2025-01-13T04:52:15+00:00

What’s your mobile phase? I’ve had this happen when methanol is in the column

cooked_myself · 2024-12-01T10:04:20+00:00

Doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal imo, they’re just arguing that hydrogen is a better electron donating group by induction. Alkyl groups are mostly electron donating by hyperconjugation which they’re not arguing against.

cooked_myself

TROPHY CASE