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The Chemistry of a PhD

The Chemistry of a PhD

Ramblings of a Drug Discovery PhD student who should really be in the lab or writing her thesis.

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Posted on March 31, 2019March 25, 2019

PhD Update: 2019 Q1

This is the last year I’ll be spending in the lab before writing up my PhD next year. I thought it would be useful for me to blog where I am now and what I still need to do in terms of my research about once a quarter. Now that we’re at the end of …

Continue reading "PhD Update: 2019 Q1"

About me

Hi there! Thank you for visiting my blog. My name is Fiona Scott. I am a PhD student at Sussex Drug Discovery Centre, based at University of Sussex on the south coast of the UK. I enjoy sharing my love of science and the highs and lows of PhD life on this blog – and also on Twitter and Instagram.

 

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🧡Chromophores🧡 Happy Friday! I isolated this orange solid today which was a pleasant surprise. Most of the compounds I’ve been making of late are white/pale yellow/pale brown. You can’t quite tell from the lighting here but it’s actually more of a “highlighter orange” shade. The molecule I’ve made is this colour because of the presence of a chromophore - a particular arrangement of atoms that absorb (take in) particular frequencies of light. In this case the molecule doesn’t absorb orange light so it is reflected back into our eyes. I expected this molecule to be a different colour from all of the others because I’ve added an additional ring of carbon atoms, called a benzene ring (C6H5-) which is known for increasing the likelihood for a molecule to have a chromophore. Coloured samples are more common in inorganic chemistry research because they tend to involve metals in their work that possess this chromophore property, but now and again organic chemists like myself get a pleasant surprise with a sample like this! What’s your favourite colour? If you’re a chemist, is your work particularly colourful?
Lawrencium is the last of the actinides, and the last of the f-block elements in this series! Soon we will return to the main block of the periodic table and I’ll finally get to talk about some non-metals! Thank you for bearing with all these radioactive heavy metals. Element 103 was discovered in 1965 by Georgy Flerov and his colleagues in Russia as well as their usual rivals, the Ghiorso group at Berkeley University. IUPAC deemed the Russians’ work more worthy of the honour when the Berkeley lab’s work was a different isotope of lawrencium. The rare radioactive metal is named after Ernest O. Lawrence who invented the cyclotron particle accelerator – the piece of instrumentation used to discover most of these elements. It is essentially a big ring of magnets that gradually speeds up sub-atomic particles in a circle until they have sufficient energy to smash into each other at high speed to form new atoms and new elements. I visited the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland in 2015 when I lived in Basel. Have you ever visited a particle accelerator? The elements you will hear about next will have vastly different properties from the f-block. Stay tuned for the p-block, groups 13-18, the final chunk of my #postitperiodictable! What’s your favourite element? How are you marking #IYPT2019 ? Let me know in the comments below. #atom #atoms #element #elements #internationalyearoftheperiodictable #actinides #fblock #chemistry #periodictable #mendeleev #scienceblog #scienceblogger #scicomm #postitperiodictable #sciencecommunication #featurethechemistry #lawrencium #ernestlawrence #particle #accelerator #particleaccelerator #largehadroncollider #lhc #cern #geneva #visitgeneva #geneve #switzerland
Alfred Nobel was the founder of the Nobel Prize. He has element 102 named after him. The metal was discovered simultaneously by Russian and American researchers so the credit for the discovery was disputed between Georgy Flerov’s group from Dubna and Albert Ghiorso in Berkeley in 1963. The IUPAC chemistry overlords decided to give the honour to the Russian researchers in the end because they had made the element first, even if they didn’t report it. Only a few atoms of nobelium have ever been made. The metal is radioactive and has a half-life of just under an hour. It has no use outside of research and isn’t found in nature. Did you read my post last week about the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Prize? It was all about lithium-ion batteries which can be found in most of our technological devices. What’s your favourite element? How are you marking #IYPT2019 ? Let me know in the comments below. #atom #atoms #element #elements #internationalyearoftheperiodictable #actinides #fblock #chemistry #periodictable #mendeleev #scienceblog #scienceblogger #scicomm #postitperiodictable #sciencecommunication #featurethechemistry #nobel #alfrednobel #nobelprize nobelprize2019 #nobelprizechemistry #chemistrynobelprize
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev presented his periodic table to the world. At the time, only 63 elements had been discovered. He finally got an element named after him when element number 101 was discovered in 1955 by Albert Ghiorso and his colleagues. Now there are 118! Mendelevium is an extremely rare radioactive metal. Only a few atoms have ever been created and it is only used in research. It is made by firing alpha particles (a form of radiation) at einsteinium atoms. Different forms of mendelevium have different half lives (rates of decay). Md-256 has a half-life of 78 minutes while Md-260 has a half life of 28 days. The half life of an element is the length of time it takes for the level of radioactivity to reduce by half. I wonder if Mendeleev ever thought he would feature in his own periodic table… What’s your favourite element? How are you marking #IYPT2019 ? Let me know in the comments below. #atom #atoms #element #elements #internationalyearoftheperiodictable #actinides #fblock #chemistry #periodictable #mendeleev #scienceblog #scienceblogger #scicomm #postitperiodictable #sciencecommunication #featurethechemistry #mendelevium

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  • PhD Update: 2019 Q3 October 7, 2019
  • Six tips to survive a heatwave working in a chemistry lab July 23, 2019
  • PhD Update: 2019 Q2 July 11, 2019
  • What’s In My Fume Hood? May 2, 2019
  • PhD Update: 2019 Q1 March 31, 2019
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