My orgo rant thread.

[blankguy]

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Oh man! I just royally messed up my orgo lab. Arrrrggghhhhhh! Is there any salvation from this? It felt like I had the anti-midas touch. Contaminated samples, samples getting blown away(not the only one to have this happen.
This orgo lab is turning out to be quite a delicate operation. Writing the instructions in lab notebook and going by without looking at the lab manual(kinda sloppy on my part).

 

[coodoo]

Oh man! I just royally messed up my orgo lab. Arrrrggghhhhhh! Is there any salvation from this? It felt like I had the anti-midas touch. Contaminated samples, samples getting blown away(not the only one to have this happen.
This orgo lab is turning out to be quite a delicate operation. Writing the instructions in lab notebook and going by without looking at the lab manual(kinda sloppy on my part).

what color is the product you made?

 

[Trookie]

One time I was refluxing a solution, and the flask came loose from the reflux condenser. The contents fell into the sand bath and started a small fire! 😱 I still got an A. Don't worry about it. Just record what went wrong in your write-up.

 

[coodoo]

One time I was refluxing a solution, and the flask came loose from the reflux condenser. The contents fell into the sand bath and started a small fire! 😱 I still got an A. Don't worry about it. Just record what went wrong in your write-up.

We actually had an idiot a few years back in my orgo2 lab who forgot to put a bioiing chip in his flask while his distillation was working. The guy takes off the thermometer label and decides to drop in a boiling chip while the solution has already started boiling. The entire apparatus just explodes and his lab coat catches fire. The guy runs around the lab screaming, and our entire class is in shock. We had to get out while 6-7 lab TAs put out the fire.

 

[Biogirl361]

ah, orgo lab... where shall i start? the time my 25 ml round bottom broke during a distillation and the steam (containing the product) was seeping out, so i just put my hand around it to keep as much in as i could? i mean you can't just re-do the 3 hour lab. or the time the o ring and plastic cap somehow managed to melt and drip into my product? or how you can do everything perfect up until the recrystallization and then for no apparent reason, nothing recrystallizes? or the time when......

 

[Biogirl361]

here is a word to the wise about orgo lab, just keep your head down and follow the manual directions exactly. do not watch what other people around you are doing because they are usually doing it wrong. and if the ta tells you to skip a step, do the step anyway!

 

[trypmo]

The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual: A Student Guide to Techniques
James W. Zubrick

A great book, was required for my orgo lab, is an easy read and very informative.

Below are links to the not-newest edition so you can get it used for a lot less than the current edition. Orgo doesn't change all that much in 3 years, I think.

at addall.com
at bigwords.com

 

[Zurik5]

Orgo lab was the worst. We'd always "fudge" our results and leave early, what a great experience.

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

Orgo was great, cause you could get a 10% yield and the teacher wouldn't care 🙂

 

[dWiz]

A funny moment happened in my orgo labs. A guy next to me caught some fumes in his eyes, was not wearing his goggles, he ran to the eye shower and turned the water on. One of the spray literally shot a stream right up to the ceiling, and the other one sprayed water on to the professors desk where he was grading papers. Apparently not a single drop went in to his eyes..so he ran off to the sink instead

 

[Comet208]

orgo lab pretty much sucked... what sucked more was the fact that it was over the summer, so we had to go there everyday and that the lab hours were condenced to 3 hrs instead of the normal 4 hours. needless to say, we all made up our results or we would lose points if we got anything less than 85% yield!!! stupid TA



oh, and the cool thing was that i broke something EVERYDAY!! Guilt-Free 😀

 

[blankguy]

The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual: A Student Guide to Techniques
James W. Zubrick

A great book, was required for my orgo lab, is an easy read and very informative.

Below are links to the not-newest edition so you can get it used for a lot less than the current edition. Orgo doesn't change all that much in 3 years, I think.

at addall.com
at bigwords.com

Yup that's what I use. They require me to do the lab procedure writeup before hand on the notebook so that I go by that without looking at the manual. Stupid me. Should I paid more attention to the details in how my class is going to differ from the book. 😡 I feel so stupid. I couldn't get any sublimation going. I failed to keep the centrifuge tube coold enough to get sublimation going. I couldn't get anything going at all.

 

[Thaxil]

Sorry to disagree with you all, but Organic lab was just a lot of fun. I still remember assembling these complicated distillation columns and making banana oil, benzocane, and aspirin. I think the direction are clear in the lab manual and as long as you are a bit careful you should always get good results. I suggest you to take good notes of measurements, times, observations. My professor only cared that we understood the reason for a failed experiment if no yield was obtained. Only thing I did not like is having to do a lab report for every lab.

 

[JawBreakerGTP]

My fav were Grignard reactions...just kinda cool. And we were able to use MSU's NMR machines.

 

[eric275]

My O-chem instructor told us about the importance of reporting the actual yield we collected at the end of the experiments because she stated, "that's what conducting experiments and being a scientist is all about". We were all thinking cool, we can perform the experiments and as long as we could account for the loss in yield, within reason, and learn from our mistakes then we would not be penalized, well at least that's what she communicated at the beggining of the term. Well a couple of lab reports later we all realized that we were having points deducted if % yields were lower than she thought they should be. Miraculously soon after that my lab group and most others that were concerned with their grades never had low % yields again. Amazing how that works. 🙂

 

[Sprgrover]

My orgo lab was a nightmare - an unbelievably hard computerized quiz every week, tedious ab write-ups, wordy, obnoxious directions and it started at a the crack of dawn. By no means did I envy those students that had to go on and take the second semester of it (which was even more of a nightmare at my school).

 

[blankguy]

I do have a tendency of making a mess on my lab bench. From now on I will do better! 😡 I also have a tendency of blind copying and glancing at my own written instructions. I will take remedial action but it seems that most people stumble here and there. I just did the worst oh well 🙁 I hope it doesn't sabotage my chances for an A.

 

[Thaxil]

I do have a tendency of making a mess on my lab bench. From now on I will do better! 😡 I also have a tendency of blind copying and glancing at my own written instructions. I will take remedial action but it seems that most people stumble here and there. I just did the worst oh well 🙁 I hope it doesn't sabotage my chances for an A.

Don?t worry about making mistakes, especially in organic. That is part of the process. Just learn from the mistakes and ask questions if you are unsure of how to do something. If you did not make mistakes, there would be no reason to be there. I often had to start over many times in lab because I forgot or skip a critical step.

 

[blankguy]

Don?t worry about making mistakes, especially in organic. That is part of the process. Just learn from the mistakes and ask questions if you are unsure of how to do something. If you did not make mistakes, there would be no reason to be there. I often had to start over many times in lab because I forgot or skip a critical step.

Thanks for the encouragement. I still haven't found my comfort zone yet but I'm trying.