Share your experiences with Orgo lab!

[allantois]

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I'm almost done with my Orgo lab (just one practical and an exam to go), and I only broke one beaker, one conical vial and one glass stirring rode. Also, apart from burning my fingers on a hot plate which was at 180C, I managed to get out alive 😛

Share your stories!

 

[Redpancreas]

This is the wrong forum to post MCAT questions. Also, if this is a school question, that's not allowed on these boards.

For the scope of the MCAT:


I'm guessing that target product due to resonance-stabilization has the potential to lose that H on the N and the acetate thing will probably take it. Once that deprotonation occurs, you'll have a polar substance that be eluted by another polar substance. The non polar (target) will just be eluted with hexane since nonpolar pulls nonpolar out and polar pulls polar out.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Was silica used as the stationary phase?

 

[allantois]

Was silica used as the stationary phase?

Alumina

 

[allantois]

Voila, turned this into an SDN-friendly thread!

 

[allantois]

😛

 

[Theafoni]

How do you edit titles?

 

[LMBLBM]

I accidentally pour some diluted nitric acid, and my fingers turned yellow. I also boiled concentrated sulfuric acid instead of water once. Even though sulfuric acid does not boil, water vapor can carry sulfuric acid.

 

[circulus vitios]

Once I screwed up so badly that I just dumped everything and wrote 0% yield.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Don't remember what I did exactly but ended up burning the glassware somehow and smoke everywhere.

 

[Frostbite22]

My lab partner dropped her entire tray. We were given a specific set of beakers, flasks, etc (this might be normal?) and she dropped it. Went everywhere. You could visibly see the professor trying not to yell. Also someone else passed out from not pouring pure HCl in a fume hood and was directly inhaling it, we had to evacuate for a little bit.

 

[CyberMaxx]

When taking apart glassware I once sprayed glacial acetic acid all over my shirt! I took it off immediately and was lucky that nothing had gotten on my skin (and that I was wearing an undershirt 😛). When I got home and took my contaminated shirt out of my backpack it literally looked like Swiss cheese! 😱

 

[deleted407021]

Really fun and easy, at least for me. I've always found labs to be the buffer for my grade, but it was the opposite for most others.

I've had my fair share of screw ups, though. Please keep your hand off the Büchner funnel after you introduce a vacuum.

 

[ascott189]

I think the day I finished orgo was the happiest of my life.

 

[deleted407021]

I think the day I finished orgo was the happiest of my life.

At least this year's ACS final wasn't that bad.

 

[Time Table]

I'm starting it this coming fall. I'm not too excited for the 4 and a half hour long labs...

 

[Zelda840]

The lab wasn't actually too bad for me, though I do remember my Grignard lab where everyone else had this yellow-orange oil but mine was poo-poo brown foam. 🙁

I liked the labs where they just give you a vial of something and you have to find out what's in it.

 

[milski]

The most boring lab ever. You boil some stuff for hours in the hopes of making a gram of white powder, which you will promptly discard. Can't be happier that it's over.

 

[phunky]

.

 

[ex_animo_92]

My orgo lab final was testing a bunch of different unknown chemicals and determining what class of cmpd was in the unknown. I wanted to save time, and some things like amines could be determined just by smelling.

Too bad I overdid it and ended up looking like an idiot coughing all over my hood. Prof yelled at me and amine smell is horrible 🙁

 

[WillburCobb]

I managed to spill half a jug of DCM all over my left hand and arm, which weren't covered.

 

[circulus vitios]

I can't remember the experiment but we had to dissolve something in concentrated HCl and then reflux it. I threw some anti-bumping granules in the bottom of the flask before turning on the heat and figured it would be good to go. Nah, splattered parts of the ceiling with concentrated HCl sludge.

 

[neurotroph]

I managed to spill half a jug of DCM all over my left hand and arm, which weren't covered.

I've been working with DCM all summer and I literally just made this face D:

My orgo lab was pretty damn fun, actually.

 

[Frostbite22]

I managed to spill half a jug of DCM all over my left hand and arm, which weren't covered.

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I freaked out when I spilled DCM on all over my gloved hand and arm. The sensation was awful. I don't even want to know how it felt un-covered.

 

[WillburCobb]

I've been working with DCM all summer and I literally just made this face D:

My orgo lab was pretty damn fun, actually.

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I freaked out when I spilled DCM on all over my gloved hand and arm. The sensation was awful. I don't even want to know how it felt un-covered.

It didn't hurt, it was more "huh, welp when the cancer sets in I know what I did wrong."

 

[mrh125]

I never had any problems with orgo lab. It was pretty easy. Inorganic on the otherhand, I got purple products when they were supposed to be green, I got docked 10 pts for making a girl laugh (WTF), and had to back titrate through 9 million tedious titrations and broke a bunch of stuff.

 

[hoihaie]

dropped and shattered a full 4000mL graduated cylinder full of boiling water.

As the TA.

ops.

 

[allantois]

About the cancer thing:

I seem to forget my rational thought in the lab 😀

Just last time I freaked out when I realized that I wasn't wearing gloves when I was holding my hands under UV light (for TLC analysis), and I had a spontaneous though, "OMG I'm gonna get cancer".

I know it's silly but I don't know how people can ever go to tanning booths

Also, my TA has a very suspicious lesion on his arm and he always backs off whenever someone is bringing any chemicals near him 😵

 

[Lawpy]

All I can say about Orgo lab is thank god yield and purity were only 20% of our grade. I was really good with the theory and structure elucidation, but I am terrible at lab work.

Lol my lab TA only graded for purity, which technically made up 10% of my grade but the TA didn't care as he's only interested in the theory and lab reports. I lucked out lol.

And my gloves tore when i directly poured super concentrated sulfuric acid right into a round bottom flask, but my hands weren't burned.

 

[Time Table]

Also, my TA has a very suspicious lesion on his arm and he always backs off whenever someone is bringing any chemicals near him 😵

I'd back off if someone is bringing any chemicals near me as well. What happens if you trip and spill some DCM on my arm?... Not worth the risk, regardless of whether I have a lesion on my arm or not.

 

[Doctor Dream]

Friend wore his favorite t-shirt to lab (first mistake)

Sometime during our experiment he must've spilled H2SO4 because as we were putting on our coats to leave the lab he noticed a charred hole burned in his shirt the size of golf ball. Needless to say he was p!!!sssed

 

[FutureSurgical]

First semester sucked. Had a grad student that cared way too much (his focus was electrical chemistry, not organic) and made everything hell. If you broke a glass pipette, he would write "-10: lab error" or something like that. I made a B in the lab only because I said "bless you" when someone sneezed during the practical (took 10 points off from the total grade for "cheating.")

Second semester was great. The TA was a grad student with a focus on organic chemistry and had a true passion for it. It wasn't an easy lab, but he wanted us to excel (which is apparently hard to come by with TAs). I made a 98% in the lab and he actually got me into some research that he is starting this fall with a new organic and p-chem professor.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

All I can say about Orgo lab is thank god yield and purity were only 20% of our grade. I was really good with the theory and structure elucidation, but I am terrible at lab work.

I was usually terrible with yield myself. Luckily, we only had to explain why the yield was low. Not surprisingly, such explanations were usually in my reports.

And there was that one time when we recrystallized acetyl-salicyclic acid from aspirin and the expected white crystals were a bright yellow...

 

[Doctor Dream]

First semester sucked. Had a grad student that cared way too much (his focus was electrical chemistry, not organic) and made everything hell. If you broke a glass pipette, he would write "-10: lab error" or something like that. I made a B in the lab only because I said "bless you" when someone sneezed during the practical (took 10 points off from the total grade for "cheating.")

Can't you contest that or something? Might be a little late now since that was a over a semester ago but wow. Saying "bless you" when someone sneezes does not warrant point deduction, who the f*** does that guy think he is?

 

[FutureSurgical]

Can't you contest that or something? Might be a little late now since that was a over a semester ago but wow. Saying "bless you" when someone sneezes does not warrant point deduction, who the f*** does that guy think he is?

I did. The head of orgo lab said "well you talked, which is against the honor code at this university, so I'm sorry but we can't".

 

[NTheo91]

.

 

[allantois]

After general chemistry lab at Rutgers-NB (run like a nazi concentration camp when I was there), I developed massive amounts of anxiety when it came to chem labs. Of course, orgo lab was no different. It didn't help that I never had any labs with friends and everyone in lab with me seemed pro at it all (it probably was just me sucking really bad and everyone else was average). I am by no means good at lab. I'm sure the little faith I had in myself played a huge role in my poor lab technique.

Surprisingly, I never broke anything other than 1 glass stirring rod. I was one of those people who had to read a step in the procedure like 100x before I had the confidence to pour it in the damn flask or beaker. Since I was always freaking out, I would often measure something and pour it in and immediately forget what I did.

Everytime we had to use a separatory funnel, I pretty much admitted to defeat. When my professor made me separate a two liquids that were essentially black using the separatory funnel, I just laughed. I don't know how I got A's in both labs, considering purity/yield was like 20% for me as well but I barely ever had any product. My purity was always decent though. Also I was always the kid who would have the brown solid product when it should have been white powder. One time i just burned a paper towel to mimic the brown powder it should have been.

Luckily I'm good at theory/mechanisms/lab techniques so my quizzes/finals were always great. I guess I have performance anxiety lol



edit: correction. I broke a ton of plastic pipette tips, but those are disposable so I guess its no big deal.

Lab was the first time I realized I'm not going to be a surgeon as I have to recheck everything 100 times as well before doing it