Oh no, sick!

Unfortunately, I've come down with something awful and was sick the whole weekend! I made it to the health center today, but was told by the doctor not to attend class for 3 days because I am contagious! Hopefully I'll have some interesting updates for you by the end of the week. Until then, I'm going to get a lot of needed zzz's.

Stephanie

First Assignments Done!

I apologize for not posting earlier this week! It was very hectic because all of my classes had assignments due this week!

Chemical Topics
The chemical topics officially finished the first module! Professor Abrahams finished the topic by discussing a variety of examples in supramoleculer and inorganic chemistry. I thought the discussion on catenanes and rotaxanes was particularly interesting because these molecules are "interlocked". Catenanes have interlocked macrocycles (rings), while rotaxanes have an interlocked stopped by two "stoppers". You can see and example of this below!

Catenane (Wikipedia)

Rotaxane (Wikipedia)

We also had a short quiz at the end of the topic that accounts for 20% of our grade for that topic. I was really nervous, but everything ended up being OK and I got everything correct! Overall, this module was a lot of fun and I'll miss having the lectures!

The second module, Computational Chemistry, started this past week. Instead of having a lecture and a tutorial, we only have a lecture for this module because it is run in a more tutorial/workshop style. There are three different lecturer's for this topic.The first lecturer, Professor Richard O'Hair prepared exercises on solvation and organometallic reactions (I'll talk about this later). First, we calculated the conformational energies (ie the energy for a specific geometry of the molecule) of the amino acid glycine (L), preferred in the gas phase, and its zwitterion form (R), which is preferred in solution using Hartree Fock methods. We then did the same thing taking into account water as a solvent. Everyone in the class did this: drew the molecule and ran code to obtain the energies. One of the questions were are looking to answer is why everyone had slightly different energies! However, this can be explained by geometry. For a single molecule, take the netural glycine on the left for example, it is possible for atoms to rotate around bonds and certain orientations are more favorable than others. So one student may have drawn a less favorable geometry than another, accounting for the slight energy differences. 

Neutral Glycine

Zwitterion

  

Research Project

When I don't have class I go into lab, because the number of days we have before we have to submit reports seems to me to be diminishing quickly! I have been work on setting up LOTS and LOTS of crystallizations. In essense reacting a copper source (like copper acetate, copper nitrate, copper sulfate) with our ligand and different combinations of other counter ions. I just set up a huge batch before this weekend, so hopefully I'll get some really nice crystals to go over for Monday morning. I'm not exactly sure when this is going to happen, but Tim, the postdoc who supervises me, said that he would try to get us time on the diffractometer next week! 

Anthropology and Australia Now

I had papers due for both of these classes this week! It was actually really difficult to figure out what to write about, but for my anthropology class I ended up discussing the theorist Mary Douglas and her interpretation on religious food prohibition. Meanwhile, in Australia Now, I chose to reflect on two topics we covered in class, multiculturalism/immigration and Indigenous history. 

Best,

Stephanie 

I realized already how much there is to do with my project! This week I had the chance to meet Professor Abrahams previous advisor, Professor Richard Robson. Professor Robson still does research at the university, but is currently retired. We had a nice chat about Caltech because he worked there for a few years back in the 60s! I was impressed that Professor Robson remembered all of the street names so well, but he told me that he looked up the names of the streets he used to live on when he heard that there was someone at Uni Melb from Caltech! It was so nice of him to do that! I was able to tell him and Professor Abrahams a little bit more about my research experience back home and as a result we have a meeting coming up to add more/modify my project! I'm excited to get to work on a few more things!

Earlier this week I was working on a straight forward synthesis for my ligand, since I had used it all to get the crystals I posted about earlier. The ligand is the more organic part of our molecule (ie. it contains carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms). I finished making it today and got a really nice white powder that I can use to make more crystals next week.

The postdoc I work with, Tim, was able to take a look at some of my crystals and figure out the unit cell. He was hoping that we would see interpenetrating copper sheets, but we only got copper chains. Regardless, I still thought it was cool to see the structure. Hopefully I'll get to take a look at some of the other crystals I have soon as well!

I don't have any other chemistry pictures right now, so I'll say goodnight with this skyline picture I took from downtown Melbourne. 

Stephanie

I have crystals!

I started this week in Professor Abrahams’s lab!

On Monday, I met with Tim, the postdoc who is watching over me and Marcus. Marcus is the other student who was assigned to Abrahams’s group. His project is somewhat similar to mine, but he is working more with what look like molecular cages as opposed to interpenetrating sheets. His project revolves around sticking ions in these cages, more specifically cesium. We didn’t do much in lab, so I just spent the time looking over the relevant literature and the syntheses that were relevant to my project. I did receive a super fancy lab notebook! I’ve never seen anything like it! It has a really nice bound hard cover and the inside is very structured and organized. I miss my plain notebook a bit since I’m used to organizing my notebook in a specific way, but this was very impressive.

 On Tuesday, I went into lab to set up two reactions. Essentially, I combined the copper salt with our ligand and another reagent and left this to recrystallize overnight. I had two batches that I had set up, both of which were really pretty! Today I checked my vials and had crystals! Since my class schedule is very busy, I didn’t have time to do anything else. However, tomorrow I’m planning on making more of the ligand and eventually characterize the crystals I have.

The left vial holds the ligand that is used in combination with the copper salt to form the crystals in the two right vials. The blue crystals I will characterize later are on the sides. At the bottom is and orange and blue precipitate.

I did get to look at these tiny crystals through a light microscope, which was very cool! It's amazing to see the structure up close! I'll keep you updated!

I'd like to thank the OSA Foundation for their support, I'm very grateful for having the opportunity to do this work and be in lab.

Stephanie

I have a research advisor!

Finally! Yesterday I found out that I was assigned to my first preference chemical research project advisor, Professor Abrahams! YAY!

Today before class I met with him to discuss the project. He has recently been doing work on coordination polymers that produce stacking sheets. What is cool about these sheets is that they separate slightly upon carbon dioxide uptake. When I initially met with Professor Abrahams before, he mentioned that some of his systems had application to gas absorption/storage. I really liked this because my previous research had been focused on actually generating gases like hydrogen and carbon dioxide (from formic acid). The work he described at Melbourne seemed to be a nice extension of what I had been doing previously.

In the unpublished paper we discussed, there were many different variants of the initial sheet he had shown me. My project will focus on examining in more detail one of the variations. Using a specific reagent, we can get a sheet that has different sized gaps in it (as opposed to uniformly sized holes). What is really cool about this system is that the sheets interpenetrate each other, meaning that one set of parallel sheets is perpendicularly interlaced between another set of parallel sheets. While you would think that the sheets would be interlaced through the larger holes, they are actually interlaced through the smaller holes. This is because the larger holes have oxygen atoms that interact with water and other cations.

All that being said, I suppose the goal of the project is to see what we can really do with these kinds of structures. How can we change and modify them? What kinds of cations and solvents can we coordinate in these networks? I’ve never worked before with supramolecular structures before (these things are enormous!), so I’m excited to see how the project goes. I’m also really excited to get some crystals and do some x-ray diffraction!

I’ll update you after my first day on Monday!

Stephanie

Melbourne International Film Festival

This past weekend and the beginning of the week have gone by slowly. My classes have been going well so far. I was actually really excited after my chemistry topics tutorial this week because I was able to answer quite a few of Professor Abrahams's questions . I'm starting to get used to the schedule here finally!

This past weekend I also attended the last of the screenings for the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). I'd like to thank the OSA Foundation for allocating a portion of my scholarship to regional travel and cultural activities because I used a portion of this to purchase my tickets! 

One of my favorite screenings was the Animated Shorts (self explanatory I think!). I was really excited for this screening because the tickets sold out so quickly. Actually, I was waiting to buy my ticket with friends, but decided I should just buy one while they were still available. After I bought my ticket, I went back to the online page and the tickets were SOLD OUT! My roommate Gianna and I went together to the theater and, luckily, she got a ticket from the stand by queue.

The shorts they screened were: The Wolf, the Demon and the Moon; Possessions; Requiem for Romance; ECHO; Like Rabbits (Sticky Ends, chap. 2); Darling; Us; Irish Folk Furniture; Palmipedarium; and Boles.

Some of the last shorts I found to be a bit strange, but these were some of my favorites…

1) I really enjoyed the first three shorts! The first short was directed by Leanne Lee (Australian!) and was set up as a myth describing how the moon came to be. Essentially, a mother wolf defending her cubs against demons dies, but becomes the moon.

2) Possessions was a Japanese short directed by Shuhei Morita. In the story, a man found shelter in a shed with broken objects that were alive. In order to leave the house, he fixed all of the objects. The animation and characters in this were adorable, especially the umbrella frog (?) which you can see in the picture http://tix.miff.com.au/session2_miff.asp?sn=&s=208

3) Finally, my other favorite short was Requiem for Romance, which the director Jonathan Ng described as a kung foo love story. The animation on this one was really beautiful because it was done in the style of Chinese paintings with watercolor backgrounds. http://jonjonphenomenon.com/2012/requiem-for-romance/

Again, I'd like to thank the OSA Foundation for their support! Hopefully I'll have some good news to relate soon, since I should be hearing back about who is my research project advisor!

Stephanie

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!

I thought this one was really gorgeous.

Opal! It's the national gemstone of Australia.

Stephanie