Gauntlet
I swear that this is the craziest couple of weeks of my life. A week ago Monday, we started an experiment in my Inorganic chemistry lab. We were supposed to take hydrated chromium (III) chloride, dehydrate it with carbon tetrachloride, and react it with liquid ammonia and ferric nitrate to make hexaammine chromium nitrate, [Cr (NH3)6] (NO3)3. It took us a long time to find all the equipment we needed. Most of it hadn't been used since last year's labs, and neither the professor, the TA, nor the stockroom folks knew where everything (or anything, in the case of the stockroom folks) was.
We finally got the apparatus set up and ran the procedure. We were supposed to have converted the dark green chromium chloride crystals to the violet anhydrous form. Instead, we ended up with black crud around the neck of the reaction flask, and a shiny, mirror-like coating in the main part of the vessel. We seem to have managed to reduce the metal to pure chromium. Pretty, but not terribly useful.
We came in Wednesday determined to run the chromium procedure again, quickly and efficiently. Yeah, right. We first found that some idiot had chipped a large piece out of the neck of the $100 quartz reaction flask. The missing piece was right next to the air outlet nozzle we needed to use in order to keep the reaction conditions right. So we had to carve a chunk out of a rubber stopper to make sure there was clearance at the outlet without compromising the seal at the end of the neck of the flask. We also had to replace the 15-inch (38.1 cm) glass inlet tube that somebody had decided to break in half and use as a dropper for hydrofluoric acid. (They didn't realize that HF will etch, or even dissolve, glass, apparently.) That involved a trip down to the basement and the glass shop. And then we had to replace the aspirator valve on the faucet in order to get a good vacuum going. Who'd have thought a crescent wrench would be essential to getting a passing grade in chemistry?
Anyway, at long last, we ran the procedure. Again. And we got decent results this time. That is to say, most of what we ended up with was violet powder. But we had a few large chunks that never seemed to react,so our purple was mixed in with a lot of grayish-black and a little dark green. Still, it was better than what we had before.
Thursday I had a quiz in my Thermodynamics discussion section. It dealt mostly with electrochemistry, which was no big deal for me. I also had an exam for my lab class. That went pretty well, I thought, although we won't get the exams back until this Thursday. I guess I'll find out then.
Friday we had to turn in the writeup for our first Inorganic lab, which involved making ammine complexes of silver, copper, and nickel sulfates. Our results were pretty good for nickel and silver, but our empirical formula and yield were both off for copper. My lab partners and I collaborated on the calculations—thank heaven for spreadsheets!—but I did most of the actual writing for the report. We've already discussed how we're going to do things differently for the next one.
Friday night at work was a complete disaster. We were running seven different jobs, which was no big deal. The shift started at 3:00, as usual, and was scheduled to run until 9:00 that night. But just about 6:30, we had a power spike. All but three computers in the building went off. We had the interviewers restart their computers, but they couldn't connect to the server. So we restarted the server and the autodialer, which takes a while even under ideal circumstances. We then had the interviewers log back on to the system. They could find the network now, but the phones weren't dialing. So we had to shut down their stations, the server, the dialer, the backup—in short, every computer in the building—and restart from scratch. We finally got everything back in order around 7:45, by which time it was useless for those leaving at 8:00 to start a new project. So we sent them home and spent the last hour watching our late-nighters and trying to clean up the mess in the system.
Saturday I conducted a training session at work. In addition to the nine contestants (out of fifteen scheduled), I also had to train somebody that will probably end up taking over the training sometime in the near future (presumably after I graduate and find steadier work). Large groups always seem to take longer to train, and having to teach the new trainer how to do everything added to the required time. And that was fine; I was prepared for all of that. What I was not prepared for was having the computers crash again, just as I was getting ready to show the trainees how our software works. Long story short, we had an hour's delay and I got out about 90 minutes later than normal.
Sunday I just rested. I was so exhausted that I came home and crashed after church. A couple of hours later, I awoke, ate, and crashed some more. Needed the sleep, I guess.
Monday morning started with an exam in Inorganic chemistry. It was bad. There were two chapters covered on this exam: boron chemistry and group theory. The boron stuff went all right, I think. But I really struggled with the group theory. There was one big problem—worth 40% of the exam—and two smaller problems. I struggled with all of them. Carp. I can take some comfort that I did significantly better than the average on the first two exams, I suppose. At this point, I'm willing to go with Derek's advice: C's get degrees.
Monday also found me back in the lab. We took the mostly purple powder we'd made Wednesday and tried to turn it into a yellow powder. We set up a distillation apparatus to make liquid ammonia from ammonia gas. Having obtained about 100 ml of the stuff, we dropped in a pea-sized piece of sodium metal. This produced something really hard to find in nature: solvated electrons, floating around surrounded by ammonia molecules but not actually attached to anything. (By the way, if anyone asks, electrons appear to be dark blue.) We reacted our product with this and some other stuff (that's technical jargon) and finally produced a rather minuscule amount of the desired product. It took us the full four hours to do this. Meanwhile, another lab group, building on everything we had suffered through, was able to do in four hours what took us three full lab periods to accomplish—and got much better results in the process. But I'm not bitter or resentful. Much.
I started the day today at 5:45 a.m., getting up in time to eat a little breakfast, get cleaned up, and drive to the train station to catch Trax to campus for my 7:30 Quantum Mechanics discussion section. The TA never showed up. So I went to the computer lab with the intention of writing a report on a seminar I had to attend for the Inorganic lab last week. No, I didn't get it done, but it's not due until next Wednesday. Instead, I took a little time to study for the Senior Comprehensives I'm taking on Thursday and Friday. I've been worried about these all semester—probably more than I need to be, one of my classmates told me today. Still, I'm more than a little nervous. It would really suck if my graduation were delayed because I did poorly on a series of standardized tests. High stakes, indeed.
After Friday, I'll get a few days to recuperate. These few days will be spent getting ready for the big dual finale: back-to-back exams in Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics on Wednesday. We have four hour exams in thermo over the course of the semester, but only two in QM. When when we had the first one, the professor scheduled it for the same day as the thermo exam that day, too. At least the final is scheduled for a different day.
So there you have it: disastrous labs last Monday and Wednesday, an exam and a quiz last Thursday, a lab report on Friday, an exam yesterday, Senior comps on Thursday and Friday, and two exams on Wednesday morning, followed immediately by driving the Dreadnought to Colorado on Wednesday afternoon/evening for the Thanksgiving weekend. Add to that a couple of shifts at work that were more difficult than they really needed to be, and that pretty well sums it up.
If I survive all of this without having a psychotic episode, I'll really have something to be thankful for.
We finally got the apparatus set up and ran the procedure. We were supposed to have converted the dark green chromium chloride crystals to the violet anhydrous form. Instead, we ended up with black crud around the neck of the reaction flask, and a shiny, mirror-like coating in the main part of the vessel. We seem to have managed to reduce the metal to pure chromium. Pretty, but not terribly useful.
We came in Wednesday determined to run the chromium procedure again, quickly and efficiently. Yeah, right. We first found that some idiot had chipped a large piece out of the neck of the $100 quartz reaction flask. The missing piece was right next to the air outlet nozzle we needed to use in order to keep the reaction conditions right. So we had to carve a chunk out of a rubber stopper to make sure there was clearance at the outlet without compromising the seal at the end of the neck of the flask. We also had to replace the 15-inch (38.1 cm) glass inlet tube that somebody had decided to break in half and use as a dropper for hydrofluoric acid. (They didn't realize that HF will etch, or even dissolve, glass, apparently.) That involved a trip down to the basement and the glass shop. And then we had to replace the aspirator valve on the faucet in order to get a good vacuum going. Who'd have thought a crescent wrench would be essential to getting a passing grade in chemistry?
Anyway, at long last, we ran the procedure. Again. And we got decent results this time. That is to say, most of what we ended up with was violet powder. But we had a few large chunks that never seemed to react,so our purple was mixed in with a lot of grayish-black and a little dark green. Still, it was better than what we had before.
Thursday I had a quiz in my Thermodynamics discussion section. It dealt mostly with electrochemistry, which was no big deal for me. I also had an exam for my lab class. That went pretty well, I thought, although we won't get the exams back until this Thursday. I guess I'll find out then.
Friday we had to turn in the writeup for our first Inorganic lab, which involved making ammine complexes of silver, copper, and nickel sulfates. Our results were pretty good for nickel and silver, but our empirical formula and yield were both off for copper. My lab partners and I collaborated on the calculations—thank heaven for spreadsheets!—but I did most of the actual writing for the report. We've already discussed how we're going to do things differently for the next one.
Friday night at work was a complete disaster. We were running seven different jobs, which was no big deal. The shift started at 3:00, as usual, and was scheduled to run until 9:00 that night. But just about 6:30, we had a power spike. All but three computers in the building went off. We had the interviewers restart their computers, but they couldn't connect to the server. So we restarted the server and the autodialer, which takes a while even under ideal circumstances. We then had the interviewers log back on to the system. They could find the network now, but the phones weren't dialing. So we had to shut down their stations, the server, the dialer, the backup—in short, every computer in the building—and restart from scratch. We finally got everything back in order around 7:45, by which time it was useless for those leaving at 8:00 to start a new project. So we sent them home and spent the last hour watching our late-nighters and trying to clean up the mess in the system.
Saturday I conducted a training session at work. In addition to the nine contestants (out of fifteen scheduled), I also had to train somebody that will probably end up taking over the training sometime in the near future (presumably after I graduate and find steadier work). Large groups always seem to take longer to train, and having to teach the new trainer how to do everything added to the required time. And that was fine; I was prepared for all of that. What I was not prepared for was having the computers crash again, just as I was getting ready to show the trainees how our software works. Long story short, we had an hour's delay and I got out about 90 minutes later than normal.
Sunday I just rested. I was so exhausted that I came home and crashed after church. A couple of hours later, I awoke, ate, and crashed some more. Needed the sleep, I guess.
Monday morning started with an exam in Inorganic chemistry. It was bad. There were two chapters covered on this exam: boron chemistry and group theory. The boron stuff went all right, I think. But I really struggled with the group theory. There was one big problem—worth 40% of the exam—and two smaller problems. I struggled with all of them. Carp. I can take some comfort that I did significantly better than the average on the first two exams, I suppose. At this point, I'm willing to go with Derek's advice: C's get degrees.
Monday also found me back in the lab. We took the mostly purple powder we'd made Wednesday and tried to turn it into a yellow powder. We set up a distillation apparatus to make liquid ammonia from ammonia gas. Having obtained about 100 ml of the stuff, we dropped in a pea-sized piece of sodium metal. This produced something really hard to find in nature: solvated electrons, floating around surrounded by ammonia molecules but not actually attached to anything. (By the way, if anyone asks, electrons appear to be dark blue.) We reacted our product with this and some other stuff (that's technical jargon) and finally produced a rather minuscule amount of the desired product. It took us the full four hours to do this. Meanwhile, another lab group, building on everything we had suffered through, was able to do in four hours what took us three full lab periods to accomplish—and got much better results in the process. But I'm not bitter or resentful. Much.
I started the day today at 5:45 a.m., getting up in time to eat a little breakfast, get cleaned up, and drive to the train station to catch Trax to campus for my 7:30 Quantum Mechanics discussion section. The TA never showed up. So I went to the computer lab with the intention of writing a report on a seminar I had to attend for the Inorganic lab last week. No, I didn't get it done, but it's not due until next Wednesday. Instead, I took a little time to study for the Senior Comprehensives I'm taking on Thursday and Friday. I've been worried about these all semester—probably more than I need to be, one of my classmates told me today. Still, I'm more than a little nervous. It would really suck if my graduation were delayed because I did poorly on a series of standardized tests. High stakes, indeed.
After Friday, I'll get a few days to recuperate. These few days will be spent getting ready for the big dual finale: back-to-back exams in Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics on Wednesday. We have four hour exams in thermo over the course of the semester, but only two in QM. When when we had the first one, the professor scheduled it for the same day as the thermo exam that day, too. At least the final is scheduled for a different day.
So there you have it: disastrous labs last Monday and Wednesday, an exam and a quiz last Thursday, a lab report on Friday, an exam yesterday, Senior comps on Thursday and Friday, and two exams on Wednesday morning, followed immediately by driving the Dreadnought to Colorado on Wednesday afternoon/evening for the Thanksgiving weekend. Add to that a couple of shifts at work that were more difficult than they really needed to be, and that pretty well sums it up.
If I survive all of this without having a psychotic episode, I'll really have something to be thankful for.
posted by Michael at
7:05 PM
1 Comments:
Nancy says, "Thanks for cursing us, you big jerk! Let me know when you're going on vacation so I can return the favor." ;)
By
Michael, At
November 15, 2005 10:48 PM
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home