Making Headway!

This last week has been filled with new experiences and exciting lab results, but as a result I have neglected my blogging duties. Don't worry folks, to repay for my delay I will be sure to make this post especially long and detailed. Haha! I'm only kidding. I will do the best to recap the week in a short yet descriptive manner.

My time spent in the lab was filled with new experiences. Last Monday, I worked in another lab and assisted a graduate student in completing an esterification reaction. For past blog followers, this was the esterification of hibiscus acid that I mentioned before. The synthesis was exciting and fairly straight forward. My tortoise shell goggles made their feature debut along with a brand new lab coat and some fancy blue nitrile gloves. After looking at nuclear magnetic resonance readings we decided we had made the product; unfortunately, we also discovered an impurity. The graduate student told me he would work on some purification ideas and get back to me. He found a way to get rid of the impurity, but he accidentally undid our reaction in the process. Luckily, we had plenty of starting material, and Ed, the graduate student I worked with, offered to redo the reaction over the weekend. Although I would have enjoyed delving into some more organic chemistry, I had already made plans for the weekend.

The time had come to delve even deeper into the south! My roommate Austin is from a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama so she was kind enough to take us with her to visit her family. Austin's family owned a boat a little over halfway between Nashville and her home. We met Austin's dad at the lake and he was kind enough to take us out for the day. It was a blast! We went tubing, laid out on the dock, and felt the wind whip through our hair as we cruised around the lake. The lake itself was gorgeous. There were tons of homes with eye catching architecture planted all around the lake and deep green trees covered the shoreline. We were so fortunate that the weather was nice while we were there. The whole way driving to the lake, Austin had to battle against a torrential rain storm, but about fifteen minutes out from the lake everything stopped. Not only was it not raining when we arrived, it didn't rain the whole time we were there! Are we lucky, or what? To top it all off, we spent the night at Austin's home and her mother made us a gourmet dinner with peach cobbler for dessert. It was like a little piece of heaven! I cannot thank Austin's family enough for all their hospitality.

Sadly, the weekend did have to come to an end, but so far this week in lab has been very productive. I finished the ORD and ECD measurements of one of the compounds and I will begin VCD measurements tomorrow!

I would like to wish a Happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there! I hope everyone is enjoying the weather back home. I hear the the sun has been shining in Colorado. I look forward to sharing with you all again soon!