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Week 10

Last blog. Sad! This has been extremely busy week. On Monday I found out two things about aniline. One, it is light sensitive so my stock that I had made up has been degraded into something else. Two, the new column that was put on last week does not elute aniline well and as a result it smears the peak so it is difficult to see. Despite this, we continued on with HPLC analysis and were able to obtain data for most of the reactions. At the same time I was doing HPLC analysis, the Johnson lab did GC headspace analysis on my samples to assess concentration of nitrobenzene and aniline. GC analysis works similarly to HPLC, except it uses gas phase instead of liquid phase to analyze the sample. As of now I’m getting excellent data and I’ll have more this afternoon! While I was running reactions, I was also working on my final power point and paper, which made for an extremely busy week! Since I’m getting really good results this week, I’m going to stick around for a few days next week and run more reactions.

This internship has been an amazing experience that I truly enjoyed. Jim has been extremely patient and helpful mentor to me over the past ten weeks. I hit a lot of walls with the research and he was always helpful with figuring out what to do next or help me problem solve. Also, thank you Vanessa for putting together such a great program! I realized this summer that I defiantly want to pursue a career in research and I enjoy working in a lab. CMOP, it has been a great run and I’m going to miss this place.
-Evan