2nd Day

I finnaly met my supervisor, she is one of the research officers in the Natural Products division where she and another officer are in charge of Product synthesis. She gave me a brief overview of what Natural products division do:

The herbatologists collect and identify the species of plants, and then chemists determine if there are any useful compounds in the plants, then the compounds are converted into other types of compounds to enhance the benefits of the original compound.

She gave me my assignment, which is synthesis and identification of chalcone via Claisen - Schmidt condensation.

First I had to calculate the masses of the two reactants needed for the product synthesis by determining the RMM and moles of the compounds. Then after weighing the two compounds, I combined both the solids in a round bottom flask with EtOH, and then added KOH solution of determined concentration that I prepared by dilution. and then swirled the contents until the solids were dissolved.

The round bottom flask was placed on an electric heating plate with a magnetic stirrer. The plate was heated to about 38 degrees and the contents were left to stir for 48 hours.

Since the addition of reactants up until the stirring was done at approx 12.00pm, I had to wait for 48 hours before continuing with the next procedures. Hence with nothing to do, I went to my friend's place and observed her doing her column chromatography. Then I also observed how another friend of mine was extracting chemical compounds in plants parts that were soaked in organic solvent. And then helped another friend of mine with his evaporation of organic compounds under pressure.

Overall, a rather dull day.

I will post up my assignment details later, which I am grateful I get to do some product synthesis while others are doing qualitative analysis.

About my supervisor.

I shall not indulge in the details of her name, appearance or anything personal. To surmise what type of supervisor she is...she is a very...elaborative person. She did not leave out any details in her explanations, and explained even the most basic procedures to me. She insisted that we ask her any questions, and made sure that we could understand what procedures we were doing, and how to do it, even simple steps like dilution of acid. I'm really grateful to have her as I feel secure that she will guide me well.