i wouldn't be taking organic chemistry lab...

Friday, October 19, 2007

if i didn't have to.

i will be ranting about o chem lab in this post, so beware... if organic chemistry is the love of your life, and you just want to spend every single waking hour in the organic chemistry lab, steer clear...

I don't like o chem lab at all. EVery single thing about the lab is so intimidating. From the solvents in the fume hoods to the glassware. In retrospect, analytical chem lab wasn't that bad. The only good point about organic chemistry lab is that you don't have to spend a whole lot of effort washing your glassware. Just use Acetone. and everything (i think) in you flask will dissolve and can be poured out. spick and span glassware in less than 5 mins. I remember the days of having to wash analytical chemistry glassware with microcleaning solution.. but oh well, those were the days...

Besides the above, everything isn't good. Firstly, the chemicals are volatile. Using the fume hood doesn't help a lot because once you take the compound out, the vapor gets to you. What's more? Sometimes, we have to heat organic solvents. Congratulations! Imagine the amount of hexanes you will be breathing in... And these tend to give you a bad headache, and god knows what else they do to you...

Plus the machines we have to use - people are generally not familiar with how to use them. So for the simplest task of determining the refractive index, which sounds hard but really isn't, people can take a whole 10 mins! My gosh. I don't know how they can spend 10 mins looking through the eye piece to determine the RI! it's not like as if its a kaleidoscope -_-"
Plus those gas chromatography machines that we have to use are really 'lao pok'. They have 3 machines to be shared among 64 students. 2 of the machines are not working. So you can imagine the queue that starts to build up, and it's really frustrating.

Oh man.. i really dread O chem lab... Every monday and wednesday, I will just get super nervous, anxious and frustrated. i know because I feel my heart racing each time I step into the lab... i hope this will get better ove rthe next 8 weeks...