Hi! This week we are still working on making the probe to detect Urea. We created a reaction between Urea, Dipicolylamine, and a few other things. We then tested this compound on a TLC plate to see what is in the substance. A TLC plate is something that separates substances in a compound by placing it in a solvent which then moves up the plate. Once we had a pretty good idea at which bands coordinate to which compounds we ran a prep plate. A prep plate is basically a big TLC plate, but instead of just putting a dot of compound on it, you place a whole line. We let that run and then looked at the result. We saw a thick yellow band in the middle of the plate which we believe is our product from the reaction. We then cut that band out of the plate using a razor and then crushed it up. We then placed this powdery substance into a funnel that has a filter. We washed it with chloroform to get all of our product off of it and into a vile. We then drove off the solvent by using a rodavapor machine. After we have our compound, we took a sample of it to use in the NMR machine. The NMR machine is used to detect hydrogens and where they are on a compound. We saw peaks where triethylamine would be which was one of the compounds in our solvent so we had to wash it again with just water. We then ran another NMR and the results came out good! Week 2 has been a success except for the ugly weather.
Wow, that sounds like some hard-core chemistry! Did you do TLC in AP Chem lab? Will you be using the probe next, or making other probes first so you have a library of probes to pick from?
ReplyDeleteJust saw your reply! I did do a TLC in AP Chem which was helpful! We used this same probe and have been working with it to see if it works!
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