What are your opinions of doing home chemistry experiments as a hobby?
Joining a professor's research lab is the most important thing to do as an undergrad chemistry major. But sometimes you just wanna play around with chemicals, and research labs aren't playgrounds. one of the most fascinating things about organic chemistry is the smells. There's thousands of dfiferent smells you can make from esters, alcohols, carboxylic acids, etc. i also think organic chemicals are VERY cool, i could gawk at a bottle of 1-butanol all day and smell it.
i'm a chemistry major and I got a part time job just to fund a chemistry hobby. I have lots of organic synthesis glassware, and right now i'm learning technique by following nile red/chemplayer videos and doing experiments in Vogel's practical organic chemistry. some of the experiments in vogel's open up lots of fun possibilities. The first procedure introduces you to Wurtz coupling, which couples alkyl halides to make an alkane. For example, you can order 1-butanol on amazon (an alcohol that smells like bananas), and use hydrobromic acid to convert that to 1-bromobutane, a clear liquid that smells sweet (but raelly shouldn't smell it, alkyl halides tend to be unhealthy). then mix that with sodium metal to get octane, a clear liquid that smells like gasoline. It's so cool that you can get a liquid and collect it in a bottle, that has molecules of exactly EIGHT CARBON ATOMS bouncing around in there . There are so many possibilies with the wurtz reaction alone. Isopropyl alcohol is readily available. Convert to 2-bromoproipane with HBr, then couple that to make 2,3-dimethylbutane, another clear gasoline-smelled liquid (all alkanes have very similar properties, they all are clear gasses or liquids that smell like gasoline or diesel, only difference is melting/boiling points). Tert-amyl alcohol can be prepared from grignard reaction of acetone and ethyl bromide. Convert that to tert-amyl bromide, couple for pic related
Joining a professor's research lab is the most important thing to do as an undergrad chemistry major. But sometimes you just wanna play around with chemicals, and research labs aren't playgrounds. one of the most fascinating things about organic chemistry is the smells. There's thousands of dfiferent smells you can make from esters, alcohols, carboxylic acids, etc. i also think organic chemicals are VERY cool, i could gawk at a bottle of 1-butanol all day and smell it.
i'm a chemistry major and I got a part time job just to fund a chemistry hobby. I have lots of organic synthesis glassware, and right now i'm learning technique by following nile red/chemplayer videos and doing experiments in Vogel's practical organic chemistry. some of the experiments in vogel's open up lots of fun possibilities. The first procedure introduces you to Wurtz coupling, which couples alkyl halides to make an alkane. For example, you can order 1-butanol on amazon (an alcohol that smells like bananas), and use hydrobromic acid to convert that to 1-bromobutane, a clear liquid that smells sweet (but raelly shouldn't smell it, alkyl halides tend to be unhealthy). then mix that with sodium metal to get octane, a clear liquid that smells like gasoline. It's so cool that you can get a liquid and collect it in a bottle, that has molecules of exactly EIGHT CARBON ATOMS bouncing around in there . There are so many possibilies with the wurtz reaction alone. Isopropyl alcohol is readily available. Convert to 2-bromoproipane with HBr, then couple that to make 2,3-dimethylbutane, another clear gasoline-smelled liquid (all alkanes have very similar properties, they all are clear gasses or liquids that smell like gasoline or diesel, only difference is melting/boiling points). Tert-amyl alcohol can be prepared from grignard reaction of acetone and ethyl bromide. Convert that to tert-amyl bromide, couple for pic related
