1) Today started off quite slowly, but I ended up learning a lot of things. So I came to Dr. Griffith's office at 11am, and he brought me to meet Mr. Donal Keogan, a final year PhD student working on the same project. He showed me around the research lab (Apjohn Chemistry Lab, named after Professor James Apjohn, the first Professor of Chemistry, RCSI) in more detail.
2) For the most part, I was shadowing Mr. Keogan as he did his research on something unrelated (we'll be tackling my research project starting tomorrow). For now, I got used to the various laboratory apparatus and chemicals, as well as the safety hazards. At 2.00pm, me and some other newcomers (ranging from summer research students to graduate students) were brought on a walking tour of the premises by Mr. Emmet. We were each given a research laboratory notebook to keep track of our experiments, and as a guide.
3) While waiting for reflux of some key compounds to occur, I looked around and saw the many different apparatus which I will have to get used to working with. Among these are the rotary evaporator, NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) machine, electronic balances, and set-ups for reflux and distillation. In addition, there are plenty of safety protocol to follow, such as not lifting the fume hood too high up, and how to wash apparatus with acetone etc. A lot of new stuff if I'm honest, but hey - I've got two months right? Hope that everything goes smoothly and at the end, I'll be able to produce a five-point presentation for submission (that's part of the contract) during Research Day. That's been my day in a nutshell, and I hope you found it an enjoyable read. Thanks for visiting my blog, and have a nice day. Cheers!
Officially my first "working day" in the labs!
Blueprints for tomorrow
Dinner from Wok In
No comments:
Post a Comment