manfred's hols
hols hav been quite busy, so no time go overseas, oso cos no $ la
a lot of time spent on doing projects
remaining time spent on watching tv shows/ movies/ listening music dat i missed out during sch term
oso spent more time outdoors
i got more sleep, to make up for the 10 weeks of lack of slp
i oso attended the vjc ting (half of it)
since tc alr write so much abt npcc camp den i dunnid add so much
i was the hike ic, so i had to walk to ecp from bishan 2 times, one for recce, one for actual ting
its actually quite near lor, walk 3 hours reach alr
since im so passionate abt chemistry, its no surprise dat im taking part in a chemistry project with jianwei n alvin, teacher mentor is mr koh
its abt making an IL (1,1,3,3-Tetramethylguanidinium propionate) using tmg n propionic acid, den using it to extract artemisinin from some artemisia annua leaves
it sounds damn cheem, but actually not dat hard, jus dat we hav to put in a lot of time and effort
oso, we r risking our lives in dis project, cos a lot of the shit is toxic n harmful
see? dis is how enthu we r for science
so far we alr made the IL, dis is how we did it
1st we mix tmg and propionic acid together using ethanol as the solvent
propionic acid stinks like hell, damn disgusting
and tmg fumes r poisonous
so we do our work in fume hood, but at the start mr koh say cannot bring the weighing balance into fume hood, so we do outside, den end up we inhale a lot of the shit, its a miracle we r still here
k after dat we stir it using magnetic stirrer, leave it for 2 hours, den after dat we hav to remove all the ethanol and other impurities so dat we get our il
so we mus use rotatory evaporator, the ting keep turning, den got heat n reduced pressure, so the ethanol will be removed, since got lower bp
after dat we add activated carbon, which is charcoal, den do the stirring plus the evaporation again
den we put into vacuum dessicator to suck, dat one damn disgusting, got grease on it, n its yellow la
den in the end we get our precious il
so dis took up quite a lot of the hols as well
5:24 PM