Today marked the end of my second week back at school, and boy are there stories to tell! The first one is the source of the title of this post...
I am currently taking Organic Chemistry II Lab, and I have a professor who is obviously Indian (her name is Vimala Majeti). Well she just goes right along with all the stereotypes we have of women from India: short, long black hair, thick accent, quiet, yet strict and firm. She wants everything done the right way (HER way) and anything other than her way is wrong! I had this experience yesterday in lab when I was setting up a distillation apparatus (it involves a series of glass tubing, a flask to hold the sample at the bottom, and a flask to collect the distillate at the top). There are several clamps to hold everything together on a stand, and a thermometer must be placed inside as the liquid is being heated, in order to determine the maximum boiling point.
As I was setting up my apparatus, here she comes criticizing everyone's work (true, this is her job, but she doesn't have to be so mean about it!). One look at my setup and she was all over me about it. Apparently everything that we had done last semester when we learned how to set this up was wrong (different teacher) so she was quite frustrated. She stood back and looked everything over, and said to me, "Stand back and look at this. Is your thermometer happy?" I didn't know what to say to that, so I just started repositioning my thermometer slightly. "No, no, no. Stand at the end of the bench and look. Your thermometer isn't happy." Apparently "happy" means straight up and down, perpendicular to the floor. I looked and mine was slightly unhappy, or tilted to the side. Well, I fixed that part, and she went off on her way. Boy, she sure knows how to trample on someone's self-confidence! I went through the rest of my experiment just fine, and from now on, my thermometer will always be happy.
The other interesting thing that I learned this week was about Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), which is a technique used by organic chemists to figure out the components of an organic molecule. One part of the lab this week was to have a talk with one of the Organic Chemistry professors and have them show us how to perform an NMR. Well, the professor that came to do this talk for my class is the head of the department, so he definitely knows a thing or two about Chemistry. We got to look at all the gadgets used for NMR, which uses giant magnets and computers to analyze samples. He showed us how to load the samples and get the spectrum for the unknowns we were to test. I found out that you have to remove your watches and wallets before stepping too close to the machine, since the magnet will stop watches and demagnetize credit cards....interesting! Later we all got to print out our spectra for an unknown to analyze for next class. Now if I can only figure out what all these lines and curves mean........
Well, that's all that's been interesting this week. I will be sure to write again soon, as soon as I get some rest this weekend! I hope y'all have a great one too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
It is a well known fact that workers that work with NMR have reduced sperm count. How do you feel?
Does the angle of the thermometer have any effect on the outcome? Or is it that if it is vertical there would be less chance of reading it incorrectly? Whatever the case, she sounds like she just likes to micro-manage.
Don't worry, I'm feeling just fine. My contact with the machine was for less than 30 seconds, so I doubt any harm was done. I assume you mean that prolonged use of the instrument would cause that...
And as far as I know, the only reason she wanted to straighten out the thermometer was for aesthetic reasons. Sure, I guess reading it would be more difficult, and it could fall out of the apparatus and break (although it was clamped very securely), but I doubt that would happen to me. Oh well...
Post a Comment