• Question: What is the coolest project/ experiment you have ever worked on?

    Asked by 329drua38 to Aaron, David, Elaine, Sarah, Zoe on 10 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by will.r, Lorelei, Asma, EG.
    • Photo: David Foley

      David Foley answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      One of my first reactions as a PhD student was a Birch reduction. This reaction involves two exciting chemicals – sodium and liquid (-63 degrees) ammonia. The reaction took two hours just to set up and turned a beautiful blue colour as the sodium dissolved in the ammonia (the blue colour is due to the free electrons in the reaction). In terms of skill, technique, effort and beauty it remains my favourite reaction.

    • Photo: Zoe Roberts

      Zoe Roberts answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      My Masters project used a lot of reactions that involved a hydrogen-metal exchange. This involved cooling the apparatus to -78 oC using a freezing bath of solid carbon dioxide and acetone (similar to nail varnish remover) and adding a liquid called n-butyl lithium. The thing about n-butyl lithium is that it sets on fire in air and water so to make sure that didn’t happen the whole reaction had to be carried out under nitrogen (a gas that won’t react with n-butyl lithium).

Comments