Week 6: 2,4-dinitrotoluene

This week I ran tests on 2,4-dinitrotoluene or DNT, the precursor to TNT. The only difference is that TNT has one more nitro group in the 6 position. Ali and I decided that this would be a good compound to test because it is very similar to TNT, and since TNT behaved kind of weirdly in the data that I have already collected, we wanted to see if a similar compound would do the same thing. As it turns out, the DNT did not behave in the same way as the TNT! So now I plan on testing TNT again so that we can see what is actually happening, and if maybe now that I am more experienced with the method, TNT will produce results that don't include the weirdness. 

This week went by fairly smoothly, we ordered some more methanol, and I made more phosphate buffer solution, plus I got to watch Vena Haynes defend her thesis, which was definitely an eye-opening experience. Grad school is going to be a lot of work! 

Eventually, I will re-test TNT, test DNAN, and also I will start to move into testing other compounds that have similar backbones. Basically, just adding more information to our knowledge base so we can eventually predict the behavior of explosive ammunitons compounds in the environment without having to physically test all of them.