Field Trip!

On Thursday, Professor Abrahams set up a field trip for all of us at the Melbourne Museum to look at the rock, mineral, and gem collection. We met with the curator of the exhibit and he spoke to us briefly about the collection and the history of the museum. It was interesting to go to the museum because Professor Abrahams was able to relate what we were looking at to some of the structures we had talked about in class. It's really cool being able to see, for example, diamond, and then think about the unit cell we discussed in class. The structures these gems and minerals make is truly amazing when you think about it! You can see the unit cell of diamond here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diamond_Cubic-F_lattice_animation.gif . What's interesting about it is that it has this adamantine like structure in it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adamantane_acsv.svg and every carbon is equivalent in the extended diamond network. Professor Abrahams favorite structure is cuprous oxide (Cu2O). In this structure each copper atom is attached to two oxygen in a linear fashion and each oxygen is attached tetrahedrally to four copper centers. This creates a sort of diamond like network. When the length of the linear O-Cu-O bonds are increased 2 fold, 8 times the volume is created, leaving enough space for a second independent network to interpenetrate the first. Essentially there is an interlocking set of networks! Awesome!

I also met a few more Australians on the field trip! When I go to lecture I usually sit with Miriam; we met outside of class the first week. She's really nice and also just decided to do the research project as well. She introduced me to her friend Rob, who walked around with us in the museum. I'm excited I'm finally starting to meet more chemistry majors and Australians!

I'll leave you with some pictures I took at the museum!