28 Jun Cricket Kees, U of Houston Chemistry, Week 4

Hello again! Just finished my fourth week here at the University of Houston, and i’m just starting to wrap up my projects and begin creating my poster for our presentation on the last day of this internship. Trying to finish up my experiments, and gathering all the data to conclude my work has been difficult, but also very satisfying. I just got my first readings of my metal films with cyanide coating (which we plan to make more of and develop patterns on for the final part of the work I did with films), Began drawing some conclusions from the solutions me and Maria made with Copper chloride and Cyanide, as well as develop more understanding of spectroscopy, which is still somewhat new to me since it wasn’t my focus.

Cyanide Copper

I started the week off by troubleshooting with my cyanide-metal films. I did some research about the actual chemistry that goes on between the cyanide and metal films, but didn’t find a lot, because its not super well-researched and unknown the clear way Cyanide interacts with surfaces. Since its not a highly studied interaction, my lab wants to investigate the ways in which the cyanide reacts to metal films and metal aqueous solutions (which was what me and Maria studied). Raman spectroscopy works by shining a monochromatic laser onto a sample. Most of the laser light is scattered without changing energy (Rayleigh scattering), but a very small amount interacts with the molecule’s vibrational energy levels and is scattered with slightly higher or lower energy (Raman scattering). The difference between the incoming and scattered photon energies corresponds to specific molecular vibrations. Because every molecule has a unique set of chemical bonds and molecular structures, each produces a characteristic pattern of Raman peaks that can be used as a molecular fingerprint for identification. Just this Saturday, me and Maria were sat down and given all of this useful info about the mechanics of spectroscopy and how it relates to our project, as well as how our project is used in his labs discoveries. The spectroscopy is super intense, and Baldelli helped me a lot to understand the exact way in which its done. The problem we wanted to find answers to was to be able to compare the peaks of the spectrometer readings, which tell us the composition of the molecule and the symmetry of bonds, could in turn show how exactly cyanide interacts with the two metal compositions differently. I also worked out an old computer so I could use it to view my spectra I got from the metal films, but the difficulty with the computer is its extremely slow, and took a while to find the errors. Hopefully, once I get the spectra of copper, silver, and chromium, I can analyze the data and come to certain conclusions, especially with the comparisons of the copper chloride and cyanide solutions to compare it to.

Film box

Hanging out with my friends is often the highlight of my day. I love working in the lab and running experiments, but it can get so tiring, and sometimes I need a break. I enjoy going to the rec-center, or getting food, or even staying in and watching shows with my friends. One fun thing I got to do during the lab was an early fourth of July celebration, on Saturday, since

Group photo!

we would be leaving on the Fourth. It was super great and I was able to invite some of my friends that work in a different lab from the same program, which was awesome. We did tie dye with some old white shirts we found from one of the last welch programs as well as eat good lunch food that everybody from the lab brought! (I got the chips) I have started to feel better after my sickness, and I have had more energy to do things, like visiting the pool and working out at the gym. Also, going on walks in the afternoon helps me clear my mind, especially after a long day working in Baldelli’s laboratory. Today, we plan on visiting the science museum here in Houston, which I am very excited about, and hope to use pictures from for my final blog post. All in all, I have had a good week 4, feeling a little sad that the internship is ending, but ready to come back home after next week!