Tag Archives: science
My final year project dissertation…not the Higgs boson
I should probably be talking about the Higgs boson today, as most people with access to the internet will hopefully now recognise the evidential possibility of its existence according to preliminary data posted by Cern yesterday. That is, if they weren't distracted by the life-changing headlines about Justin Bieber throwing a tantrum. (I won't even honour that mention with a link).
Anyway, instead of thinking about the Higgs boson I've been directing my attention towards my dissertation. The loving memory of my dissertation that I handed in on May 1st this year has sprung back into my life, as I've been asked by my former supervisor to write an essay about my research, in the hope that some lovely people will give me an award for all of my hard work. In a way my dissertation was somewhat like the Higgs boson before today: hard to find (amongst the crates of degree related folders) and difficult to understand (I presented it to my Mother to read and she didn't even understand the title). Hopefully I can remedy the latter by explaining my project, for those of you who are interested - ie. my Mother, in this post.

I spent six months almost solidly in the lab, from October 2011 to March 2012, working on the "Synthesis of Norlignan Derivatives". What I did during those six months was to spend every free minute of my time (when not in lectures or eating lunch) wearing my lab coat, working out quantities of chemicals to use, mixing chemicals, monitoring reactions, hoping the reactions worked, working out why they didn't work, extracting products, weighing yields, working out which liquid chemicals (solvent systems) I should put together to separate out and purify my products, purifying my products in a long drip-drop process (normal phase column chromatography), washing thousands of vials, working out the structure of the products I had made using fancy instruments (NMR, IR, GC-MS) and finally, writing my dissertation. (Phew - I hope you got all of that!)
I was trying to make a compound with something new stuck on the side of it, that may exhibit greater anti-inflammatory properties than the same compound without that new thing stuck on the side of it (see diagram below). I won't go into too much detail about the chemistry here, but I will say that it took 5 steps and some interesting reactions to get to the end product.

Unfortunately the final reaction failed and I got a slightly different product than I intended. However it could still show good anti-inflammatory properties and I got a chance to show off my theoretical knowledge by explaining why I think it happened. Explaining why things went wrong is possibly my second favourite thing about chemistry experiments, the first being working out the structures of compounds (which is easily fueled by my love of nuclear magnetic resonance).
So that's my final year project dissertation, hopefully explained simply enough that my Mother understands it, but with enough science in it that I can justify posting it here! If you're a science-type and want to know more about my project, I'm always very happy to discuss it in more detail, just get in touch. My project was definitely my favourite thing about final year and probably the best piece of academic writing I've produced so far. Now I just have to explain to my Mother what my placement project was all about...anyone for a slice of zeolite?
Geometry Daily
Today I stumbled across some fascinating geometric images by Tilman Zitzmann. #38 initially caught my eye because, rather humourously, it takes me back to my inorganic chemistry lectures where we spent most of our time trying to draw the perfect cube (I personally think I've managed to master it after four years!). I really enjoy the simplicity of juxtapositional shapes and the mix between Zitzmann's digital and analogue style makes this work a breath of geometric fresh air. As I would simply be replicating his portfolio if I posted all of the images I enjoy, below are a select few of my favourites:



Zitzmann's aim is to create one geometric image a day, taking inspiration from everything around him - including, as I like to see, a lot of science related concepts. However, a lot of these illustrations remind me of different scientific ideas to those Zitzmann intended, such as I can imagine the lines in #100 to represent striated skeletal muscle tissue cells. For me, the six 'moons' in #163 illustrate the six outer electrons orbiting a nuclei, in a simplified Bohr's representation of an oxygen atom. The halves of the central circle represent both the neutrons and protons of the nuclei and as each electron can exist in either one of two quantum spin states, this time the halves of the 'moons' represent each state (spin up or spin down).
However you see it, I'm sure the images can be interpreted in several ways. I'd be interested to find out if anyone else shares a similar viewpoint to mine, or indeed a completely different one!
References and Connections
You can view the Daily Dot's interview with Zitzmann here, and follow Geometry Daily on Tumblr, Facebook, or Zitzmann on Twitter.