I'm a college chemistry student, who used to take over his parents' living room to synthesize some compounds FOR SCIENCE. Blog is currently on hiatus; I'm still around if you want to talk, but I'm not going to be making much new original content for the immediate future.
I don't know if anyone will read this anymore, but I thought I would write it anyway. As I write this, the last post on my blog was made just shy of two years ago, and even that was not true content. Yet I still have over 3000 followers--which is amazing--so it's possible that someone will see this.
A lot has changed in the world. And a lot has changed in my life, both in the ways that people who follow this blog would be interested in and ways they would not. It might be narcissistic to assume that anyone cares, but for the past few months, I have been in a very reflective and contemplative state, not always to my benefit, and I thought this might be a good outlet for it. If someone else can derive some interest or learn something from my situation, all the better.
So, I am in the final year of my undergraduate degree. I became interested and started learning about other fields beyond chemistry. After I worked in a structural biology lab, I wasn't sure if science research was what I wanted to do. I ended up leaving that to try social-cognitive psychology research, as psychology was a growing interest of mine and is my second major.
To be honest, I loved it, and if I could continue it in the current state of things, I would; but that isn't how things worked out, sadly. Now I am doing an organic chemistry-materials science for my senior honors thesis in chemistry. And I am excited to work on a project with more independence and responsibility. But I still have lots of regrets, and look forward to a very uncertain future.
When I came into college, I was set on pursuing chemistry research for my life. I wanted to get a PhD. That mindset did me more harm than good. To be honest, I'm not sure if chemistry is for me. I'm not sure if I love it enough. I'm not sure if I am cut out for graduate school. I'm not sure if I could get in or survive somewhere worth going. This blog was a hobby; real life is different. Now is a very awkward time to be going to graduate school, anyway. Schools are shrinking their cohorts, slashing their funding, et cetera. It makes me feel like a failure to have doubts, but I am not sure I can make the commitment to graduate school right now in my life.
Thankfully, I'm fortunate enough to live in an area with healthy pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries that hire chemists, even at the entry levels. So that's what I'll probably try while I try to figure things out. And maybe I'll like it enough to pursue it, or decide I really do want to go back to school for the PhD. Or that I hate it and want to try something else. I've thought about going into teaching, or patent law, or even science writing. Of course, none of these are easy or safe paths. But they're ways of leveraging my education in ways that don't involve being a lab monkey, and of writing and talking and thinking and learning about science, sharing with it other people, and contextualizing it in new ways, which is what I really have come to appreciate more than anything.
There are too many other things out there that I've become interested in, and in some ways that makes me regret my degree. I've become interested in things like history and politics and philosophy. I've had lots of time to read, and I've read some really great things, including some really great science writing. That's one thing I would really like to do, I think. Write really great science books. I think science writing is at its best when it cuts through all of these areas, becoming uncompromising on technicality, while placing science in the context of human existence. It makes it feel tangible, approachable, and at its peak just about lift off the page into the real world. Great books, great science books included, change the world and leave impressions on people, ordinary people, in the way that articles don't. I sincerely believe that, even in this day of ever-specialized knowledge.
And this'll probably get me crucified by the hardcore physical scientists among us, but that's part of why psychology excites me so much: because you can come at it from so many different angles. There's biological and chemical hardware that acts as the basis for a brilliant array of emotional, cognitive, and social outcomes, which in turn can affect that very same biology and chemistry. Psychologists borrow abstract concepts from philosophers and operationalize them into things that can be measured, if imperfectly.
That's what always excited me about biology and chemistry over physics and math, too. That sense of scrappy empiricism, trying to map out the properties of systems that are unknowably complex, each time, getting a little closer to understanding, and having to get comfortable with strange exceptions, flawed models, and so on. That’s still what I live for and what I want to represent in whatever I do. That’s one thing that I don’t regret my education for giving me. “Are DMF and oDCB miscible? Can’t find it in the literature? Well get a vial and find out!” Or on the psychology side of things: “No literature precedent for these variables interacting? Well, seems like we need to come up with a new manipulation. Wait, our results are completely not what we expected? Time to back up and test some more things.”
Anyway, that was a weird tangent, but writing this has been an invaluable meditative exercise. So thank you for bearing with me. I like thinking and reading and writing about these things. Science writing is one heck of a difficult field to crack into, though my understanding is that having written things to your name already helps, including a blog, so... I've been thinking about reviving this blog, or starting something new. I'm not sure exactly in what capacity. I'm probably not doing many new experiments of the kind that would go on this blog anytime soon given that I'm staying in my college town (though given that I live alone I am itching to try a few dead-simple extractions and crystallizations again, but nothing revolutionary or complex; don't tell my landlord). But I've got a few ideas for projects, and I'm not sure how any of them will land, so I just wanted to gauge interest. No promises. I'm a busy guy these days; I was hard-pressed to choose between writing this post and taking a much-needed nap. But it's something that's been nagging at me and I just wanted to put my thoughts on paper and get them out there, even if it isn't to anyone in particular.
hello ! any new life/science/school updates ? hope you are having a gud summer ! (:
Hi! I am having a good summer! I hope you are too, anon! I’m always hesitant to take too much about my personal life (mostly because I’m afraid of boring people, not because I’m afraid of being stalked or something like that… again, I’m too boring to stalk!)
So at the beginning of the month, my summer research experience finished up, and I had to present a poster on our work. Unfortunately, I can’t say much at all about the details of what I did, since it’s still “proprietary” work - the poster was pushing it. My work was a lot more biology-based - I did a lot of molecular cloning and a little bit of protein expression and purification. So that’s something I’m kind of concerned about - I mean, I like it and I find it very interesting, but I worry that later on down the line that kind of experience may not be what some people are looking for. It was a case of “I’ll take what I can get” after I got rejected by an organic synthesis lab - but I really enjoyed the work and like the people I’m working with, and they think I’ve been doing a good job, so I’ll be staying on with them for the semester.
Anyway, as far as life and school go, that’s a whole other thing. After an uphill battle with red tape and the chemistry department, I’ve been invited but not officially registered for honors organic chemistry, which would be a big win if the deal was actually sealed… and anyway, I’m having a whole existential crisis about my major and what I want to do with my life and I’m not going to get into that to bore everyone to tears (and also incite judgement like yikes you all will rip me to shreds if I told you what I’m considering) unless you specifically ask because I know I’ll also just gush about it forever if you get me started. So yeah, holding back on that unless you poke me more, but rest assured, I am having an existential crisis.
hi do you have an instagram because YOU SHOULD. you do some cool shit
Thank you very much! Unfortunately, I do not have an instagram. When I first developed this blog, I thought about putting it on instagram instead of tumblr, but I figured Tumblr would be better for also being able to include text content, as well as a … generally nerdier audience. As for a personal instagram, I don’t have that either, as my actual life is pretty darn boring.
Potassium trisoxalatoferrate(III) trihydrate (K3[Fe(C2O4)3]·3 H2O), otherwise known as potassium ferrioxalate. I previously prepared the sodium analogue of this complex. I used a similar method, but to reiterate since it’s been a while:
I first used iron(III) oxide which had been prepared by letting extra-fine steel wool react with water and air over very long periods of time.
4 Fe(s) + 3 O2(g) → 2 Fe2O3(s)
I reacted this with a stoichiometric amount of oxalic acid, which can be purchased as a wood cleaner. This produces iron(III) oxalate and water.
This compound is only slightly soluble. However, since the oxalate ions are in excess, an equilibrium is formed with the trisoxalatoferrate(III) complex ion which is much more soluble and gives the solution a beautiful green color.
The solution is filtered to remove any insoluble residues from the starting material and, then a saturated solution of potassium chloride (obtained from no-sodium salt substitute) is added:
Then, isopropanol is used to precipitate and wash the product.
I’ve been working on several other things but none of them have really been working out, and I go back to school soon, so that’s no fun, but at least I have this to show for right now! Sorry my photography skills are a bit out of practice (did I have any in the first place? Not really.)
Dude how was the rest of your freshman year?! Good luck in future endeavors!
Hi! I’m so sorry for being so late to respond to this ask! My freshman year ended okay, at least academically speaking - multivariable calc was a little touch-and-go but I ended up coming out on top with the 4.0. I was also chosen to be the secretary of my school’s undergraduate research journal for next year. I’m really excited to work with the journal because it draws on knowledge of both science and writing, which are two things that I really enjoy. Stuff about my summer under the cut!
I’m currently about halfway through a summer research program at my school. I’m working in a structural biology lab that studies HIV. I’ll probably write up a post towards the end of the summer about the overall course of what I’ve been working on, maybe linking to my poster or what I end up writing for the journal I just mentioned.
Working in the lab is honestly a really humbling experience - I’m not trying to brag, but for most of my life I have not been the dumbest one in the room, but that’s exactly what I am. I’ve definitely had to learn a lot, fast, and even though I make stupid mistakes and much of the lab’s work goes over my head, I think I am improving? The people are nice enough, even if they are a little eccentric (after all, they’re scientists, too). So things could definitely be a lot worse.
I’m just not sure if this work is what I want to commit to for my undergraduate career; while I like the biology aspects of the work, I’m afraid of boxing myself into it. I know scientists get really judgy about what areas you have experience in, even if people don’t want to admit it. I accidentally let that concern slip to a grad student who’s doing a rotation in the lab, and she says “Oh no, that would never happen” but we all know it could totally happen. For instance, when I interviewed with a PI for an organic synthesis lab, he specifically mentioned that “nobody’s going to question or doubt your ability if you have experience doing synthesis” - I don’t think that’s the case with biochemical work - though I’m quickly finding out from other members of the lab that crystallography is a dark art in and of itself, and anyone who is good at it has made some sort of pact with Satan or something, so who knows.
And of course, that’s not withstanding my questioning if bio/chemistry research is what I want to do at all. I’m still really interested in psychology and have been thinking about doing a double major even though I’ve been told that’s disadvantageous career-wise. I also really enjoyed a writing class and the type of abstract yet still logical thinking used there (which, also, psych draws on more than the natural sciences), so I also have thought about looking into law and am going to take a political science class on law next semester. Another reason I am interested in law is because I’m quickly realizing that it takes an amazing scientist to really change anything, but you only need to be a good lawyer in the right place and time to really help someone out who needs it.
So yeah, in terms of aspirations, I’m all over the place. Also my friends encouraged me to do Chinese for my language requirement? Because I forgot to take the Spanish placement test. And somehow no one stopped me from doing this? So, 你好，朋友们。我说中文说得不好。That’s my 一零一 knowledge for you. I’ve got three more semesters of that, which probably was a mistake, but I made the bed, time to lie in it. I mean, time to 睡觉. I actually enjoy it despite it being, useless practically and academic-planning wise a straight-up negative. Sunk cost fallacy is a helluva drug.
Yikes that was a long wall of text. Sorry about that!
I am a senior in high school and I just finalized where I am going to school next year! I CANT FREAKING WAIT!!!!! I am gonna major in chemistry or biochem. What is your favorite thing about college thus far? Im so excitied for most things and I really want to start dating. How is the dating life like for us nerds out there? Finding any cute girls out there!?!
Hi! Sorry for the late reply to this post, first of all. Congratulations on choosing your school! I really like the sense of freedom and independence that college gives you, at least as compared to high school. I also continue to be blown away by how some professors will go above and beyond to help students learn. If you get the right professors, listening to them talk and interact with students - nevermind talking with them yourself - is an incredible experience. That’s what’s defined college for me academically for me so far.
Now, I’ll say this with a large caveat that I haven’t really experienced this in classes for my major, which leads me to my next point - it’s great to have an idea of what you want to do, but stay open-minded. College is a chance for you to be exposed to things you never could have before. They call it “university” because you really can come across just about everything in the universe. (Or don’t keep an open mind, because at this point, I don’t know what I want to do, and I wish I could go back to knowing exactly what I wanted, haha!)
Dating is a very personal question - and what I mean by this isn’t “I won’t answer” but that it varies a lot from person to person. I thought that type of stuff would get a lot easier once I got to college, but it’s not really, other than that you have more freedom. If you’re a dateless loser like I am, you’re still going to be once you’re in college, unless you take it upon yourself to change things. That doesn’t mean run around chasing girls like a lunatic - after all, “don’t force it” is very true - but it means that your attitude and your choices are critical components of anything you do, and those are all on you. I don’t mean to sound very negative or mean, but I want to be honest. Nothing is going to magically fall into your lap, socially, romantically, academically, or otherwise. One thing I’ve learned above all else in college is that if you don’t do it for yourself, no one will do it for you. It’s not You vs The World, but The World can’t help you if you don’t ask.
This week, I got contacted by another lab, asked to interview, and I did, and it went really well. They really want to have me join, so I’m all but officially confirmed to work with them over the summer - for a paid stipend and with on-campus housing, too!)
If I had to classify this group broadly, it’s more of a structural biology/biochemistry type of deal, where they work on characterizing structures of HIV enzymes - most critically, reverse transcriptase - including resistant mutants, and their interactions with anti-AIDS drugs to shed light on how they may be working and point at possible targets for future drug design.
It’s all very exciting, and it’s a fairly large, well-funded group, so I figure it’s a healthy environment to be joining into, at a time when they’re actually on the upswing, getting really good results, and making use of some of the training I got in high school. Is it the most hardcore chemistry group? Definitely not compared to the organic synthesis lab - but I had doubts about losing the biological bent in my chemistry education anyway, so this is a great way to use both.
And on top of everything, the building has “centralized lab services” for basic things like glass washing, so I’m not even going to be doing all that much glassware washing as the resident monkey, I mean, freshman. Over the summer I’ll probably work towards getting my own low-priority but still very real project under the supervision of one of the grad students or postdocs.
What is the funnest part about college? Have you made friends?!? What about the realm of dating?! Anyways, good luck this semester and I look forward to what you have in store
College is fun, but it's very stressful, too. I really like the independence and choice you get in figuring out what you want to do with yourself, even in your day-to-day routine (of course, that means you have to do chores like clean and do laundry, but you take the good with the bad). I do have some really great friends. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten into any relationships. I'm still the same dateless loser I was in high school, ha ha.
Mini-update, analytical chemistry isn't bad, but the lab - my first college lab class - is very stressful, and it's not helped by the fact that it's in a near 80-degree lab in the basement of a poorly ventilated old building. I interviewed to work in an organic synthesis lab over the summer, but the interview went... less than ideally, so I probably won't get the position. So, yeah, ups and downs.
Thank you for the well wishes and for checking up on me!
Happy new year to all! Once again, I’m affirming that I’m not dead. Stuff below the cut.
First things first, blog-related stuff. I have actually created a new page. If you go to my blog as an independent URL, I made a “Chemistry Inventory” page that lists (most of) the finished compounds I’ve made, with links to posts discussing them and with pictures. Of course, there are ones that are missing. It’s not actually all that much when you look at it, so I’m disappointed and blah blah blah...
Anyway, I’m currently on winter break after my first semester of college. Due to some scheduling things and my advisor being ... less than stellar, I didn’t take any chemistry classes this semester, though I’m planning to take Analytical Chemistry next semester (I’ve placed out of both semesters of Gen Chem due to IB credit; yes, I did get a 7 on the HL exam). But I’m still keeping up with what I can - I’ve joined my school’s chemistry club, and I’m also going to apply to a summer research program to hopefully get my foot in the door relatively early on with a lab. That’s why I’ve been sweeping this blog up - I’m trying to get it in good shape in order to show it off if it seems like an opportune time. (Side note, I have a chemistry poster in my room. No, it’s not a periodic table.) I’ve got about two weeks left before I have to go back to school, so I’m going to TRY to get an experiment or two done for old time’s sake, but I can’t promise anything. (I really want to work with transition metal-salicylate complexes since I never got the chance and that was actually one of the things I really wanted to do in the beginning).
In other, still unexciting news, since I’ve been taking gen ed requirements this semester, I happened to take General Psychology. I didn’t even really want it, my school just sort of dumped me in it. And, holy shit, I loved it. I’m registered to take another class with the same professor next semester, and I’m very strongly thinking about minoring it since it’s only another 3 or 4 classes after that and I just find it so fascinating. I hope you all don’t judge me too harshly - I know the “hard” scientists out there tend to look down on softer sciences. Overall, college is a lot of fun, though, and I haven’t even done any chemistry yet!
(The only thing is... I hate my roommate...)
That’s really it from me. I hope everyone’s doing well, and to get a post or two up in the next few weeks! I’m still always around, so if you want to chat, I’d love to talk!
Today is August 10th, 2017. In 3 weeks exactly, I will be moving into my dorm at college. Six days after that, the fall semester begins. My parents keep telling me to start packing up all my equipment so we can put it away, but like most things, I've been putting that off. I don't want to say it's the end of this blog, but it's definitely a hiatus for a while. I'll still be around, of course, and more than happy to answer asks or talk or whatever, but I've always tried to focus my blog on original and (relatively) high-quality content, and as far as I see at the moment, the opportunities to make that will be limited. Since this is not the conclusion but rather a significant change, I'd like to take this time to reflect and look back on this blog, and look forward to the future.
Tumblr tells me that I currently have 3263 followers. That's ridiculous, and far more than I ever thought I could get. Even with the porn bots factored out, you're still looking at a LOT of people who signed up for infrequent content written by someone not qualified to write it. I really have to apologize to you all for being so slow and sporadic with my updates. I could have definitely done a lot more if I worked at it, and this summer I basically forfeited everything with the logic that "I have two months left; what's the point?"
Now I'm regretting that mindset. There are very few chances left for me to be able to create content in this setting and in this way. This type of "research" is completely unacceptable at actual scientific levels and even in amateur scientific circles like sciencemadness. What's the point of synthesizing dozens of transition metal salts that we're pretty sure exist? There is no point, but I did it for fun anyway, and everyone seemed to be on board with it.
Through the two years of making this blog, I definitely learned a lot. I definitely did learn a lot about chemistry, of course, and I have no doubt that my success in my school chemistry course was much more the result of unintentional practice than in some kind of innate ability. I also learned about other things, too. Writing, communicating, networking, photography. I made so many friends through this platform and met people who shared the same interest as me. I discovered a field that captivates my interest, even if the professional community has moved on from what I currently find myself so interested in (#borninthewrongchemicalgeneration). I found something that I could take pride in and invest myself into and that was great. And I want to thank you all for making that possible. I'm not saying I did it all for the attention or anything like that, but all your kind words and love really helped keep me going and made it that much sweeter.
I still have so many projects I want to finish, and I don't know if I ever will.
Looking forward, there's not much to say. I requested a general chemistry class, and I think I actually place out of it straight into organic, which is nice. I would definitely like to get involved with research in my undergraduate career at some point, but I doubt I'll hit the ground running with it as a freshman because I'm not that much of a go-getter, anyway. I don't know if any of that will lead to content, since research is probably off the table for a while and I'm not intending to turn this blog into a studyblr (a. my handwriting sucks and b. I'm not a girl).
What I eventually got around to saying was, thank you for your support over these past two years. I hope you got as much out of it as I know I did. I'm still around and I still check tumblr so feel free to chat anytime, though it might take me a bit to get back to you. Maybe I'll check in after a while, talk about how things are going, but on some level or another, this is it. I love you guys. Thanks for everything.
I just discovered your blog and I just want to say that I am very impressed. As a high school student with an interest in chemistry, I find your posts fascinating! I wish you luck in your future chemical endeavors!
Cobalt(II) sulfate heptahydrate, CoSO4·7 H2O. In older parlance, this salt might be known as cobaltous sulfate, and more historically speaking, rose vitriol. I obtained it from lithium-ion battery paste. Many consumer-grade Li-ion batteries, such as laptop batteries, which I used, are lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), although a few are other types such as lithium iron phosphate or lithium manganese oxide. This is quite a long procedure with a lot of steps, but it’s not particularly difficult.
I devised my procedure from two papers - Nayl et al (2014) for the leaching, and Chen et al (2011) for the precipitation. I first physically disassembled the batteries and extracted the paste. Then, I heated them with ammonia and removed the supernatant solution. Copper is a common impurity in these batteries and it complexes readily with ammonia, so it can be easily removed this way.
After a thorough few washes with water, the next step is to heat the paste with sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Although hydrogen peroxide is normally an oxidizing agent, under these warm, acidic conditions, it acts as a reducing agent. Nayl et al suggest that these reactions may be at work*:
*In the interest of full disclosure, the only modification I made to these equations is that it seems more likely to me that under common conditions water would form as a liquid, not a gas as the original authors suggested.
The next step is to raise the pH. The authors, being actual chemists, used sodium hydroxide, but that’s a precious commodity for me, so I used sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) for much of it. It’s suggested that you can increase the pH all the way to roughly 11 before Co precipitates, but I didn’t go that far before switching gears to Chen et al’s work.
After this, the cobalt can be precipitated using oxalic acid as cobalt(II) oxalate:
Chen et al used ammonium oxalate, which is nice if you have it. Rather than prepare such a compound separately, I simply raised the pH of the solution to sufficiently basic in the previous step so that the spectator ions could do the work for me, as seen in the above equation.
Anyway, I filtered the solution to retrieve my cobalt(II) oxalate, a nice pink powder. Once washed, this can be thermally decomposed to give a mixture of cobalt(II,III) oxide, Co3O4, and cobalt(II) oxide, CoO:
2 CoC2O4(s) + O2(g) → 2 CoO(s) + 4 CO2(g)
3 CoC2O4(s) + 2 O2(g) → Co3O4(s) + 6 CO2(g)
The cobalt(II) oxide easily dissolves in sulfuric acid to yield cobalt(II) sulfate, which can be evaporated to get these crystals:
CoO(s) + H2SO4(aq) → CoSO4(aq) + H2O(l)
I still have plenty of battery paste to work with, so I hope to look at more cobalt(II) salts in the future and possibly even some complexes. A lot of early work with coordination complexes was done with cobalt, so it’d be neat to retrace some of those steps!
Anyway, a quick update on my life, I’ve just graduated high school, I turned 18, and now I’ve got about a month and a half to get as much chemistry stuff done as I can until I leave for, well, a while. I’m going to focusing on more transition metal salts because it’s easy enough, but we’ll see if I can come up with some other things before move-in day rolls around. Again, sorry for just dropping off the radar for so long.
Holy shite your science is pretty. (Don't mind me, juuuust creepily scrolling through and liking all yer posts...) It's probably my inexperience talking, but the experiments you post seem to make such neat products! I'm assuming you don't post the "failures"... and now I'm kind of curious to see what those would look like...
I’m glad you like it so much! Most of the very pretty products are inorganic compounds, and the colorful ones are from transition metals. The failures for those usually just don’t crystallize in the way I want them to; I like to isolate large crystals even when things like to crash out as massive globs of intertwined microcrystals. That’s why crystallization can be such a dark art of trial and error. Organic compounds (and, by extension, metal carboxylates - acetates, citrates, etc.) can be burned, so in the end you get this black-brown tarry mass that usually smells nasty and is just gross. Basically, I have high standards for inorganics that I know can come out nicely like chlorides or sulfates.
Hey there, I'm the CuSO4 crystal person who totally forgot to update you on what happened since I had a family thing and then appendicitis and have been super busy. Thank you so much for all of your help, the experiment was really cool (even if I couldn't calculate the water of hydrate) and I found that the higher the acidity, the masses also increased (likely cause of polarity and evaporation). It's only a science 10 course so my teacher wasn't looking for much and I ended up getting 100! :)
Awesome! Glad everything worked out! Good chemistry experiments often have simple but powerful designs like this, so it probably helped meet all the basic requirements of the experiment and get you the 100. Nice work!
