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Week 5

I can’t believe I’m already halfway through. When I started this week Jim had a side project for me to do while we were waiting for the supplies for the electrode to arrive. My project was to determine if various forms of nano-iron were reactive with the probe compound and if so to determine the kinetics of each reaction.

Nano-iron is stored in an anaerobic environment which required me to work in a glove box to prepare the samples. I’ve always seen these in labs, but have never had the experience of using one before. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of doing chemistry with super thick gloves on behind a window, let me tell you, it is one crazy experience. I have never spilled so many times in lab or worked so slow. The worst part was when I botched prepping a sample and needed another vial, yet did not have one in the glove box. In order to bring any material into the glove box it must first pass through an airlock, which takes about 15 minutes to evacuate and flush with a mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen gas. Probably the most frustrating part of this week were the two times that I forgot something for the glovebox and spent 15 minutes waiting for the airlock to flush. The good news was that unlike caffeine, all the forms of nano-iron tested displayed reactivity with the dye. However, due to poor sampling, the kinetics looked a little rough. Oxygen was somehow leaking into the syringe I was using which caused the dye to be oxidized.

Due to the promising results from this project I’m going to be switching over to this project rather than continue with manganese dioxide characterization. The goal for next week is to re-run these experiments under argon to avoid oxidation of the dye before it reaches the uv/vis and hopefully obtain good kinetics data.

On Friday we had lunch with Vanessa and some of the grad students who talked to us about graduate school. Although I’m still freaked out about the fact that I’m graduating in less than 10 months and the GRE still scares the crap out of me, it was relieving to hear these guys talk about their experience with the GRE and post undergrad life. After this summer I’m 100% sure that I want to attend grad school and OHSU looks like an awesome place to go. Now I just need to be accepted! On that note I’m off to study my GRE book.