Stop, Drop & Roll

So, school started this week. The plan was for me to take both semesters of organic chemistry next year, unless I got into pharmacy school this year, and then I would just take the second semester this summer with the lab and white knuckle my way through it, as I had two out of the three quarters a long time ago. I hear you use about 0 to 5% of organic chemistry in pharmacy school, so I feel perfectly fine about trying to "get through" this class.

Lab starts with the required safety lecture about what to do if you get burned, catch fire, or blow yourself up. Then, we have to do an inventory of our supplies. The last time I was in a chemistry lab would be biochemistry lab the spring of 1992. Yep, I am a little bit out of it. I had quite a bit of panic trying to figure out the names of all the various flasks, tubes, clamps, cylinders etc while filling out my inventory sheet.

Then, the professor tells us to do our experiment. No prep or instructions. I am staring at this equipment and all the vials of chemicals and feel like I would like to run for the hills.

Next about 10 minutes into lab, two different people burned themselves with acid. Somebody dropped some on a girl's leg and another guy put his elbow in it. Both chemical burns required first aid. I figured if people who know what the equipment is called can injure themselves this quick, I have a good probability of needing to stop drop and roll or blowing up the lab.

I did get through the lab and didn't even have to start my experiment over like many of the over-confident self-starters who actually charged ahead quickly. (As a side note, there were quite a few BYU students there taking summer chemistry to get an "easy" A at an "easy" school to improve their chances at getting into medical school, which cracked me up!) I definitely have a lot less confidence going back to school as an old woman, but it will probably be to my benefit, as it appears that over confidence and chemistry labs do not mix.

I made my yellow powder with combining various chemicals while I kept the solution below zero degrees, vacuum extracted the precipitant, boiled it with methanol, vacuum extracted the new and improved white powder, found the melting point of the new white powder, and did spectroscopy on it. I have no idea what I made or why I made it, but I'm about to figure that out soon when I fill out my lab notebook. It actually was kind of fun to get back in the lab I have to admit. I think it will be even more fun when I can figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. Wish me luck - I think I will need it.

Update - in case you were wondering, I made methyl m-nitrobenzoate, which is an example of an electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction, in which a proton of the aromatic ring is replaced by a nitro group.