Inorganic Lab Experience

 This was yet another incredibly informative lab where I got to learn a lot about the platinum metal group and some of the properties that make these metals so unique and useful. Particularly, the trans directing effects of planar platinum structures and how different the properties of different configurations was surprising, as I found out that the cis version can be a great medicine while the trans version can be a deadly poison.

 This experiment, we synthesized wilkinson's catalyst and its bromo substituted derivative by reacting rhodium chloride with triphenylphosphine. Pretty yellow crystals were formed, and it was very informative to see the differences in FTIR and HNMR caused by the substitution by bromo groups. While there was supposed be a catalyzed decarboxylation by the complex onto n-heptanal, this did not work due to the low yield of the reaction and the micro-scale of the reaction.

 In this experiment, the amino acid glycine was used to complex to a copper metal center. Then, the product was heated to convert from kinetic to the thermodynamic product. It was fun to see the differences cause by a single change from trans to cis conformations, and how these differences show up in the infrared spectra.

 This experiment was an easy one, and we were yet again using a compound I was familiar with, EDTA. This multidentate ligand exists in different states depending on the pH of the solution it is in, and thus required precise tuning of pH in order to successfully perform the desired reaction, and kinetics studies were performed to see how the different pH levels affected the reaction rate.

 This was one of the experiments that I was looking forward to performing the most, but not for typical reasons. First of all, photocatalysis is such a cool and interesting field of chemistry that is ever evolving to change the future of energy production, so the reaction itself was awesome to learn about. However, more cool is heat sealing glass test tubes using a torch. God that stuff is cool and applicable to future glass involved projects.