so you think chemistry lab is fun...

Friday, September 22, 2006

well... it is, if ALL the reagents are already prepared for you, and all you have to do is pour 50 mL of solution into the buret, or pipet 25 mL of a reagent, and start your titration.

Analytical CHemistry gives you the whole package. So now, you get to prepare your stock solutions, weigh out your chemicals and dissolve them to form a solution. And if you think that is all, no no.. you're wrong.

I felt like I enrolled into a dishwashing class on the very first laboratory session we had. We had to wash all our equipment with Alconox, and scrub them real well. Then wash with distilled water and the usual.

Imagine:

12 125mL, 2 500mL, 2 1L polyethene bottles
6 250mL conical flasks,
6 filter crucibles
3 weighing bottles
2 sets of glass beakers (each set contains a 100mL, 250mL, 500mL and 1L beaker)
100mL, 250mL, 500mL and 1000mL volumetric flasks
1mL, 5mL, 10mL, 25mL, 50mL pipets
50mL buret
etc etc etc

And its not only the washing. Today, we had to prepare NaOH solution. We had to dilute it from 19.1M (mols/L) of concentrated NaOH. Man. I don't know how i got concentrated NaOH onto my hand, because I did not even recall spilling anything. But I felt something biting into my skin. Being the itchy hand that I am, I rubbed that area, and it was soapy... eww.. 19.1M.. so freaking concentrated... In JC, we always worked with concentrations of point something... and those are already quite corrosive...
Later I found out from Kelvin that his TA had told them to wear gloves before taking the concentrated solutions. Argh!!!

Besides all the above complaints, analytical chem is really fun. I'm starting to like it a lot! It beats secondary and JC chem lab work. It rocks!

Yup, so you think chemistry lab is fun? It is!