Current Thoughts on Research

In this blog entry, I will talk about what my current thoughts are about the aspect of research. For the past two weeks, I have been working on my research project, which also happens to be a small part of my thesis. The entire thesis will be finished this semester before April/May. Currently, I am trying to replicate the nitration of toluene from the previous theses made about the project. The only new method that I will add will be to perform the same conditions using a different molecule: cumene. Before that, I performed five trials with toluene, which was a bit tricky to do. Some of the complications that I found were: handling the organic layer with care, buildup of pressure inside the separation funnel, and using arbitrary amounts of magnesium sulfate to dry my organic layer. More than once, I have had the unfortunate incident of accidental spills of both my organic product and my aqueous layer (which contains my catalyst that I’m trying to recycle). The first time I used magnesium sulfate, I put too much of it into the beaker containing the organic layer. That incident has made me lose much of my product and I would have much more if I used controlled amounts of Magnesium sulfate. Another problem that I had was when after I transferred my solutions after refluxing, I has to shake the separatory funnel in order to make sure that all or the organic layer was separated from the aqueous layer. This caused a built up of pressure when I used diethyl ether to wash the aqueous phase. Sometimes, the pressure would become too great that I would lose some of my liquid when the top of the funnel was in contact with it.

My general opinion of research is still positive. I still think that to do research is a fun and work-fulfilled way to discover the unknown of what nature lies in store for us. That being said, I must admit that the way I think about how research is done has somewhat changed for me. I have learned that it not always easy. Some part of my experiment were easy to do: I just had to collect a certain amount of my reactants, mix them together in a 25mL round bottom flask, and heat them up while waiting for at least 14 hours. After that, the reaction is stopped. Then the challenge arrived: getting your desired product and catalyst manually. I did not find it easy and that was the part where I learned that it is important part of research to handle my extractions with care. I often found out that research will often demand the extra mile in doing whatever it takes to minimize accidents. In my case, accidents occurred in trying to extract product and catalyst and even when I was being more careful, minor accidents still occurred and I got frustrated since I did my best to minimize mistakes. One more thing that did occur that slowed down my research was that the IR spectroscopy and rotovaporization machine could work at first or malfunctioned, respectively. I learned that when situations like this occur, I must remain patient and ask the necessary help that will assist me in repairing such malfunctions so that I may continue. In short, even though there could be roadblocks during research, it should not discourage any scientist to continue doing it. A scientist with dedication and a lot patience would be eligible to do research.