rotary optical rotation.... what?

this week’s labs...

fucking LOVE Mr. Bean

oh goodness.. what can I say. It was a bad week, and continues to be a bad week cuz I have a midterm tomorrow that I don't feel at ALL prepared for! 

Tuesdays lab ... organic... last week’s lab consisted of just stirring for over an hour .. and then a liquid-liquid separation... everything seemed to go just fine.

THIS week.... not so much.

The first part we had to gravity filter the drying agent and then rotary-evaporate the solvent out ...which is basically is just putting your flask onto a machine that spins it in a water bath and the solvent boils off....

wanna buy one?

but of course.. the one I used wasn’t on and so the bath had to warm up.. taking (what felt like) forever. Then when it finally started to boil, of course I walked away and by the time I returned it was a goey boiling mess!

*slaps forehead*

BUT.. it’s ok, can be salvaged... let it cool and prepare the reagents for crystallization... ethanol and petroleum ether.... by the time everything was measured out... the magnetic stir bar that I put in my flask had congealed with my product into a solid goo of shit.

mine was colorless, but you get the point

*FUCK*

So then of course, I just ignore it and continue on... I added my reagents and manually stirred it for a while (which basically just consisted of me shaking the fuck out of it for 5 minutes)... then used a spatula to manually unstick the stir bar... and wooofuckinghoo we were on our way!!!

*happy dance*

Now the reaction has stirred for 15 minutes and it’s time to cold vacuum filter the product.. and of fucking course... I did it too slow, cuz I’m too unsure of myself and I’m sure lost some product in the filtrate.

*fuck me*

So now I’m stuck with 30% yield and product that I’m not sure I’ll be able to characterize with IR and melting point cuz I don’t even know what kind of condition it’s in.

and that’s not even the worst of the two labs this week.

Wednesday I had physical chemistry lab... we had to do some kind of optical rotation lab where we measured the angle the compound bends the light (or not) based on its chirality (I think) ... see.. even now I’m not sure wtf I did. Part of the problem stems from the fact that on the day of the lab I had

a)      no partner

b)      a massive fucking headache

c)      no clue wtf I was doing

It made for an... interesting.. lab experience to say it gently.... I didn’t dilute my solution properly.. and ended up having to dilute it more later... and the real kicker is the fact that my data is complete shit because I had a headache, and I was supposed to look through this little machine and read the angle the light disappeared... so of course my vision was less than optimal that day. Basically I read it as increasing with decreasing wavelength and it was supposed to be completely opposite.

*fucking fuck*

If it wasn’t for the midterm tomorrow... I would crawl in my bed and hide under the covers and just cry.

I’m still close.

Instead, I’m doing flash cards in the hopes that it will help me study for the midterm tomorrow where I have to know around 30 polymer names and structures.. as well as what their common uses are. Plus about 60 reactions of which I need to know about 10 reaction mechanisms.

Sound like good times?

Come on, you know you want my life.

well, back to the salt mines.... someone please have a drink for me.