Tag: college

Science Update

Just a brief update regarding chemistry et al. Of late, I have felt less worried about the curriculum and my coverage of it (or maybe just less overwhelmed) and have actually been quite excited of late.

Last week my students got to do a lab on colorimetry, which was great. Today one of the classes analyzed their results and they all had excellent data. It was the first time most of them had done volumetric pipetting and several of them proved to be adept at it. Some even liked it. 🙂 I, personally, love getting to play with volumetric equipment like pipettes, volumetric flasks, and burettes. You feel like a REAL chemist with that kind of glassware. 😉

I just started a chemistry class through Illinois State University (I’m getting a collection of out of state universities for my education) that’s tied in with Flinn Scientific’s video demonstration series. It’s on atomic and molecular structure. I think that will prove to be very beneficial for the course I’m teaching now. (London forces? I haven’t taught those in YEARS.)

Physics and Advanced Problems are doing pretty well as well (though I’ve just realized both classes are doing research projects at the moment – now I feel sorry for the kids in both classes!)

So, yay for science!

The trunkful of Booze – a family tradition?

Been over a week since I last posted, and with judiang posting almost daily on her WordPress blog of late, she’s making me look bad. So, now that LJ has calmed down a little, I can finish talking about my Organic Chemistry Vacation. (Might as well post about it since this past week wasn’t near as interesting.)

After my boozy Wednesday, Thursday was fairly uneventful. I had supper from that famous French Restaurant, Kroger. I had le fried chicken, le baba ganoush a la whole clove garlic bread, le pistachios, and le brownie. (The joy of buying supper from a grocery – you can combine all sorts of things in one meal!)

Friday was our last class. Kate got us conversant enough in benzene ring chemistry, and then we filled out our evaluations. I had nothing but praise for her – she was a fabulous teacher. And then it was off to Opie Taylor’s for lunch and then Oliver Wineries for a tour.

Kate was kind enough to drive me to the restaurant and winery since I wanted to return to campus before leaving. The restaurant was a bar with decent enough bar food. I had half a Reuben and onion rings. Oh, and a cup (very small one) of chicken noodle soup with really thick (and tasty) noodles.

Oliver Winery is the first winery that appeared in Indiana. The grounds are beautiful with lots of flowers. And when we got into the sales area, I saw the cutest little bottles and went right over to them. To discover that they weren’t wine bottles at all, but hard CIDER!

Two of the class had left by the time we gathered at the winery, so when we got on one of the tours, the poor tour guide had 9 chemists in amongst the non-chemists. I think we got him too flustered with our questions. He definitely forgot to show us the video on bottling that they usually show their tours. But he was nice enough to take a group photo of us.

After the tour, those of us who were left bellied up to the bar and tasted what Oliver had to offer. So of course, I tried the ciders. I tried the three flavored ciders (peach, raspberry, and strawberry) and then a Gewurztraminer. I liked the ciders pretty well but couldn’t remember if the Gewurz was something mom would like or not. So I got her a Riesling and dad a Shiraz and me a case of Cider.

Kate brought me back to where my car was parked on campus, and I put the first bit of booze into my trunk. But I had plans for more. See, I was channeling my great grandfather Lowry that day. He was a brew master, and would sometimes get called away to a brewery in Indiana (for example) to help them out with a problem. And when he would get ready to return home, the grateful brewers would load his trunk up with beer and fill the empty spaces with single bottles of liquor.

So I headed next to Kroger (where I had gotten supper the night before) because I wanted to buy some Upland beer for dad to try. And when I asked him what he’d like in addition to the wheat beer, I mentioned that they had a nifty Fat Tire display at the store. “They have Fat Tire? Well, get some of that!” was his response. So I picked up a 6-pack of Upland Wheat, a 6-pack of Upland Amber, and a 12-pack of Fat Tire. Those went into my trunk as well.

But I wasn’t done yet! My goal was to head to Trader Joe’s on my way home. It was only slightly off the beaten path on my way home (in Indianapolis), so I had a list of things to buy for me, for mom, and for dad. And dad’s requests were all wine. So after a supper of Pad Thai at a Thai place that happened to be in the strip mall where the Trader Joe’s was, I picked up a dozen bottles of wine and plenty of nuts (for mom and for me) and added those to the trunk.

My trunk wasn’t as full as great grandpa Lowry’s was, but it still had more booze in it than it’s ever had before. I had dad take photos when I dropped the booze off the next day. I’ll have to get the pix from him so I can show y’all.

Hello, I’m drinking a beer!

People may be surprised to learn that today I had a BEER with my lunch! OK, so I only got a 12oz (since they didn’t have half-pints), but it was a real beer, not a malted beverage (Mike’s Hard Lemonade) or hard cider.

Kate, our instructor, wanted to have at least one field trip where we got to see one of the local industries at work. Her original plan to get us into one of the pharma companies fell through despite her starting on it over a month ago. So she came up with a tour of Upland Brewing Co. which is located in Bloomington.

So after our morning lesson (where one of the chemistry librarians showed us around the online chem library – excellent resource!), we headed off to Upland for lunch and then our tour. Kate drove those of us staying on campus, but everyone else drove themselves.

For lunch, I ordered the fish & chips and, after Kevin let me sample his beer, I also got a beer: Upland’s Weizen. Although the taste itself wasn’t all that, I liked the yeasty aftertaste. (I think I’m supposed to use “finish” instead of “aftertaste.”)

Once again, Kate was overly generous and bought our lunches (she rocks, you know). And then we headed off to the brewery section to have our tour. Photography was allowed, so photograph I did! Visit my gallery for a detailed tour of Upland Brewing Co. Very educational and informative. And Kate even managed to relate it to stuff we’d been talking about in class. Great day!

Fun with Grignard Reagents

Second week of Survey of Organic Chemistry and I’m still having fun and learning lots. Hotter’n Hell with more hotter to come, however. The only drawback, IMO.

This weekend, I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (or as I call it HP7.2) with the folks. We all agreed the movie was great. And it had my favorite scene from the book in it. (I have an LJ icon that spoils it, if you want to hunt for it.) The audience actually cheered when the scene occurred, myself included. Our only drawback was having to sit in the front row to see it.

On Sunday, I headed to mom & dad’s before I left for Indiana in order to catch the Women’s World Cup Final. Mom and I sat and watched and cheered (and sighed) as the game progressed and went into extra time. So I wound up heading to uni later than I’d intended. Picked up a Filet o’ Fish & large fries from Maccas on the way (bad me).

Yesterday I went to The Laughing Planet Cafe, a local restaurant that serves interesting burritos. I ordered the Pestato with basil pesto and it was yummy. And for supper, I hung around on campus for a while reading, and then went to Hartzell’s Ice Cream for a Blizzard-like item with chocolate soft serve, Reese cups, and peanut butter. Very yummy, but it didn’t last the whole 25 (hot hot hot) minute walk back to the dorm.

Today for lunch, I went to Basil Leaf Vietnamese Bistro. I ordered the Vietnamese salad, which according to the menu is “lemongrass grilled with spring roll served over soft rice vermicelli noodles, fresh bean sprouts, basil/mint, carrot, lettuce and crushed peanuts.” I had it with pan fried tofu and it was very yummy (though the mint leaves were overpowering and I took the last few out).

After lunch was lab. Once again, long jeans & closed-toed shoes made for hot walking outside, but are very important for lab safety. Our task today was to make a Grignard reagent (an organometallic compound that makes for a negative carbon and is great for making C-C bonds. We used it to make either Crystal Violet or Malachite Green (both dyes, among their other uses). Our group was going to make Crystal Violet but nearly everyone else was too, so we made Malachite Green instead.

It was pretty neat. We tried to be as anhydrous as possible since water reacts with the Grignard agent even more readily than the organic compound we were using. And our instructor told us that the reaction works better if you speak with a French accent. My partner and I opted to not do this, but wound up with the reaction working fine. However, there was a group who wound up not making a dye at all. Still, we had enough of the two dyes to do some tie-dying afterward. I tie-dyed two socks (one in each) and my fingers. And now, apparently, am dying the bathroom counter here in the dorm. Oops!

Here’s a photo of my dye-job (which doesn’t look as nice as it did earlier today):


Malachite Green and Crystal Violet socks (with multi-fiber samples beside them).

Tonight I had yogurt & granola for supper (yay for my cooler) and then went off to see HP7.2 for a second time. This audience weren’t quite as appreciative of my favorite scene, but they’re from Indiana – what do you expect? 😉

Recrystallizing can be a be-yatch

I’m sitting in my library in the comfy chair with Linus sprawled on my lap and Lucy sleeping on my headrest. I suspect the little ones missed me while I was away re-learning organic chemistry. Don’t worry, babies, only one more week of classes!

As an adjunct professor for Indiana University thanks to ACP (Advance College Project), I can take classes at IU for free. And the chemistry department offered a 2-week survey of organic chemistry with us ACP teachers in mind. So I figured, free graduate credits that would be useful and accomplished quickly? Hell yah!

Well… it would be free if I didn’t live 3 hours from the Bloomington campus. So I have decided that my big summer trip is to take this class. The dorm room rang up to over $500. There’s a $120 tech fee/lab fee that won’t be reimbursed. And 12 hours of driving for the course = gas expenses. Oh, and going out to eat daily doesn’t help.

Other than the fact that the dorms were air conditioned (woohoo) I knew nothing about them. Fridge? Microwave? Towels? Well, turned out towels were provided, but the rooms have no fridges. (There’s a microwave for the floor that I could use, however.) In anticipation of no fridges, I brought my cooler and some milk and yogurt. And it wasn’t until midweek after I purchased a bag of ice that I discovered the ice machine on the ground floor of the dorm. Heh.

The course has been great. Kate Reck is the instructor and she’s the one who trained us at the ACP training in June. There are 10 of us students but I’m the only newbie to ACP. A few of the students took Kate’s class that she offered last summer on analytical chemistry. I’m relearned a lot, and there are things I’m pretty sure that I’m learning for the first time.

I already talked about our first lab. We do labs on Tues & Thurs (and need long pants – it’s bloody hot this week and will be hotter next!) Our Thursday lab was on extraction and recrystallization. We were given a container with three unknowns – an impurity to be filtered out, an organic base, and an organic neutral substance.

We dissolved the compounds in diethylether and then filtered out the charcoal. Next, we added sodium hydroxide to make the acid soluble in water and used a separatory funnel to separate the two solutions. The neutral compound was separated from the ether by a rotovap (nifty device that evaporates volatile solvents by spinning & using a vacuum), which was our second time using it. The acidic solution was returned to an acid, whereby it precipitated out of solution.

We decided to just recrystallize the acidic compound, so my partner, Rich, determined the melting point of our neutral compound. We were just .2°C over the accepted value for naphthalene (which was the correct compound). Meanwhile, I was working on recrystallizing our carboxylic acid. The super saturated solution (I was using ethanol as the solvent) was room temp, so I put it in the ice bath, and it immediately all fell out of solution. Bugger.

No matter, reheating the flask allowed me to redissolve the solution. And this time I went even slower. I was adding cold water to a room temp water bath, when Kate stopped over. She suggested scratching the flask bottom with a scoop, and proceeded to do it. Whereby the crystals came out in a big clump once again. We both about fell over with laughter. (The things that chemists find amusing).

So no idea if we would have gotten the right melting point for our acid. We were basically out of time by then, so my partner and I cleaned up and put our goggles away for another week.

One of my intentions when taking this course was to eat at the nifty ethnic restaurants near campus. Only the weather conspired against me. It was so hot at the start of the week that I went to the student union Mon & Tues. Wednesday, four of us went to Nick’s for lunch, where I had the nicest cheese steak I’d ever had. See, at Nick’s they don’t chop the steak up, it’s just laying on your hoagie. Nice and medium rare and very yummy with the provolone and onions.

Thursday, Kate invited those of us who could to join her and her hubby for supper at their favorite Mexican place for supper. So I had yogurt for lunch and joined Kate, Bill, Marvin, and Kevin at La Torre near the Kroger on College Mall road. I had a combo meal with a carne asada, two chicken flautas, and a spicy chile relleno. Very yummy and excellent company.

And my night life on Thursday wasn’t done yet. It turns out that the Indiana Festival Theater just started their summer run of The Comedy of Errors. So Wednesday night, I purchased a balcony seat for the show. As soon as I’d driven back to the dorm, I walked to the theater and sat in the middle of the balcony to watch the show. It was excellent. The set was tiny, but very fun to look at. The cast did a great job (though both Antipholus’s stumbled on a few lines here & there) and I loved the addition of an accordion player separating the scenes. They had a queen instead of the duke, which was fine too. I laughed a lot (as did the rest of the audience) and enjoyed myself. The walk back to the dorm was also very pleasant.

Today, most of the class went along with Kate to Amol India for Indian Fud. They had a nice buffet and I ate well. And then Kate footed the bill for us! Nice lady! (And a very good teacher, too.)

Class let out a little early today, which allowed me to leave campus a bit earlier and I got home before 7pm. Been hanging out with the kitties most of my time here, downloading free software which I get with my IU ID. Free Adobe CS 5.5, free ChemBioDraw, free Lynda.com (with the exercise files!) It’s all good!

Tomorrow I’m off to watch HP7.2 with the parental units. Am looking forward to this. And I think Sunday I wanna catch some World Cup (I’ve missed most of it this time around, alas). And then Sunday night, back to Indiana!

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween today!

Wound up being a productive day for me. I just sent the following to the Masters Thesis forum for our Science and the Public Program at uni:

They don’t call me Trina “A Day Late and a Dollar” Short for nothing. Let it be known that the proposal, she is-a-written. I’ve sent it to my father (a retired physical science teacher) for constructive criticism and should be able to mail it to Dr. Liu tomorrow (Sunday, the day after my self-determined deadline).

🙂 I then wished them all luck on their own goals. I’m liking the feeling of accomplishment, which may diminish a bit after dad gives me his commentary (and later Dr. Liu gives me his), but for now, it’s a nice feeling. I think I might be able to do this thing after all.

I Aten’t Dead

Been ages since I last posted, so I figured I’d better pop a quick note in to say that all is well, I’m just a bit busy.

I’m working on my thesis proposal with a goal to have it done by Halloween – of this year. That would be, like, this Saturday. Ahem. So here I am, writing my literature review (or rather, taking a break from writing my literature review to give Lucy scritchies, comment on Twitter, and type this up).

Got my costume planned for Friday (dress up day at work) and should have photos this weekend. Tomorrow’s Beggar’s Night in our county, so I’ll be interested to see how many kids I get. I might wind up working on my proposal while I wait for the kiddies to pop by. The parental units are at their first party at their soon-to-be community tomorrow night, so no Beggar’s Night for them.

Last weekend was a Buy Music Weekend for me (and I partially blame gregmce for it) which I hope to write about soonish. I expanded my MP3 collection with the new purchases as well as with some older DW audios (the missing eps) finally ripped into my collection. And updated playlists. Etc.

This past weekend I also installed Winders 7 proper on my PC. Go me! Got it for the $30 college price. Yay for Masters program! (One of these days before my graduation I intend to get Adobe Web Premier for a reduced rate thanks to my scholarly ways. Heh.) Oh, and also related to college, I have registered for what I hope will be the final credit hour in my program. Yay!

OK, that’s enough procrastinating. I should get back to writing my literature review. (As I told the folks in Twitter, I’m not even done with my thesis proposal yet and I’ve already got 30 citations.)