The FANTABULOUS lab timer

A most fantastic device has been invented in our lab recently. It is the all purpose chemistry 4 and a half minute glass! Here is how you too can make your very own device. All you need is two bottles of your choice (preferably empty, but whatever floats your boat), some superglue, some sand, and lastly a piercing implement!



Who really needs an hourglass anyway. An hour really isn't a very practical time period. However 4.5 minutes seems to be the ideal amount of time to do many many lab related things! For example, ever come back to your bench to find your t.l.c plate has overrun? Well no more! With the 4.5 minute glass your t.l.c plates will be full of t.l.c goodness when you return to your bench. (Of course, the 4.5 minute glass has been specially designed to account for variables such as solvent system, plate size, wind velocity etc.)

Here are some other lab related activities you can do in 4.5 minutes:

1) Annoy evil lab mates
2) Set up a column
3) Decide to quit your PhD
4) Act like an idiot and get your friend to take a photo (see picture below)



Of course there are many more, but I will leave suggestions up to our valued blog readers.

Beaker faces wrath of Dimroth rearrangement

At the end of 2006 I was messing around with some 1-alkyl-2-aminopyrimidinium-based ligands of type 1 in aqueous solution. For some reason, my ligands were giving weird NMR spectra after heating in water. Turns out Beaker the ignoramus was unaware of some old-school chemistry pioneered by Dimroth in the early 1900's, which predicts the formation of rearranged product 2. This has the alkyl group now stuck to the amino nitrogen atom rather than the pyrimidine nitrogen. The simple hydrolysis and condensation mechanism is depicted below.The reaction is very general - it can occur in a heap of nitrogen heterocycles in which an amino group is alpha to an endocyclic nitrogen atom. So yeah, its back to the drawing board for me =(

-Bkr

Happy New Year!

Well, just in case it wasn't already obvious, Sydney is THE New Year's Eve capital of the world. Here is some proof:



I didn't take the last picture, which explains why it's halfway decent. The thing lit up on the harbour bridge is a gold emerald (i dunno why it's not green). Emeralds evoke ideas of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz, which, in turn, alludes to Oz = Australia. I'm sure you'll agree that the logic of our totally awesome country is impeccable!

Heaps of chemical mayhem will be in store for 2007 =)

-Bkr