‘Old chemists never die, they just stop reacting’ XD

It was well cool on Wednesday because our chemistry class got the opportunity to take the day off school and go to Newcastle University for a day of chemistry! Woo!

It was really good actually, even though I’m not a chemistry fanatic, I still found it quite interesting.
In the lectures, we we’re reminded of the ways chemists identify substances (IR and spectroscopy for example) and well as taught vaguely about NMR, which we will need to know about for next year. So that was quite helpful, as normally, the lectures that you attend at university either don’t really apply to what you need to know now or in the near future, or don’t apply at all. So it was incredibly useful to get a bit of a head start. After this we got the opportunity to put it into practice in a tutorial session.

Another lecture that was presented, identified the ways in which a degree in chemistry could lead you to bigger and better things in the future. This was also quite interesting as, even though chemistry is not my preferred choice of degree, I never knew what could actually be done with a chemistry degree. Even though, if you think about it, of course there’s going to be a lot of job opportunities for them, just no one ever thinks about the people behind the scenes of safe paint making and other such things.

What was also good about this was that we also got the opportunity to test out the fancy fancy lab equipment when we performed an undergraduate practical . So we got to use concentrated acid (woop!), working fume cupboards (woop!), and lot’s of other equipment that we wouldn’t have had the chance to use in school, as well as the techniques to actually use them properly.

So we made an ester by adding a carboxylic acid to an alcohol, in the presence of a concentrated acid (I think it was sulphuric) and purified it via adding an ether and shaking it a bit (can’t remember the technical word for it) and distilling it off. At the end we got to print of an actual IR of the ester we made ourselves! So that was quite fun.

During the whole process of making it, a pear-y solvent-y smell started to creep up on everyone, and it made it just a little harder to think. So a word of advice to finish: don’t try and sniff it.