This is Tuesday of Week 5. Haven't done much this week, but I've decided to update you. I didn't mention in any previous posts that the graduate student I'm working with is a 1st year graduate student at NYU. This being said, her project is still at the beginning and she is still learning. This is really helpful because we get to learn together! Some of the machines, for example, the fluorimeter, she had never used and had to be taught how to use it. This is nice because it makes me less intimidated when not knowing how to do things.
At the beginning of last week there was another high school student that joined. I think her name is "Uum" (I'm not sure how to spell it but that is how it sounds). She is working with the PhD student, JP. All last week she didn't do much and doesn't really talk. I was talking about this with Jess (My grad student) and comparing it to my first week. She said that although I was a little quiet at first I would still always ask if there was anything I could do, or help, or even watch what she is doing in lab. The tips that Dr.Peretz and Dr.Crider gave us definitely were beneficial! Thank you!!
Today another girl Jenny joined us. She's going to be a sophomore in college at a college in Scotland! I had met her the first week because we went to a safety training together. She is working with a guy named Qitian. She comes to me with questions about where the bathroom is or when I started actually doing things in the lab. I enjoy these questions because that was me a few weeks ago.
So, back to the experiment parts of my lab. Last week we had ended on not seeing any change in the wavelength on the UV Vis test when we reacted butylurea with the probe. I had originally thought that just means that it doesn't bind. However, it means that it could have still bound but the absorbency or wavelength does not get affected. I was talking about this with Jessica yesterday and I had brought up the question as to if it does actually bind or not and how we could see that. I had asked if by taking a NMR if we could tell if it bound or not. Jessica then thought about it and agreed that we should take a NMR to see! I thought this was neat that my input and thoughts were actually being taking in to consideration.
We took the NMR today. If urea did bind to the probe, then the aldehyde peak would go away or at least decrease. We did not see that happen, so now I'm back to not knowing what we are doing next with this probe.
Our PI Daniela always gives us suggestions on what to do. We sometimes follow experiments that have already been done to make sure things are working. The other day we did an experiment with an antipyrine and a compound that Qitian made. We didn't see what we wanted to see so Daniela wants us to do the experiment again with butanedione also because that is what was done in the article we are copying.
Below is the graph from the UV Vis machine of the reactions done with the compound (QL-1-194) and butylurea in different pH's.
The other day we also conducted another metal titration. We started with a cuvette full of Acetonitrile, butylurea, and JG-1-101. We titrated it with zinctrifluormethansulfonate. We did see a wavelength change when the zinc started to bind to the compound.
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