First Day: June 7th

Alright guys, so today was my first day at "the lab." And since I'm relatively new at this whole "blogging" thing, you're going to have to forgive me if it sounds like I don't know what I'm doing... cause I don't.  I guess I'll figure  it out as I go along. So here it goes...

Yes, it was my first day at the lab, and yes, I was supposed to start yesterday, but my PI (Carlo) had a sudden obligation to take care of, so I started today instead.  When I got to the lab, I first had to get registered and obtain a "Penn Card" (an ID). After I got over the unflattering picture, I headed back to the lab where my PI gave me some articles to read while he went to a meeting (woohoo, more reading!). These articles were important though because, as I found out at the end of last week... my project got changed.  Nothing too catastrophic though, because the only thing that was really changed was the chemical that I will be synthesizing and purifying.

Then, After the articles were read (and lunch was eaten), I began to learn how to do my first reaction.  I was a little intimidated in the beginning, but after the first couple of steps, I realized that it was just like following a recipe or a procedure in science class, and that I would be completely fine.  Honestly though, I was awe stricken by some of the methods that I will need to use.  I will be using a high power microwave that is able to heat the reactants to 150 degrees Celsius in a ridiculously short amount of time.  I also saw a demo of thin-layer chromatography that I will eventually need to be able to navigate by myself. Some of you that took AP Bio probably know something of what this procedure is.  Remember when Mr. Brown (Hi, Mr. Brown!... if you're reading this) said that we weren't going to do a part of one of the labs because it never works properly? and then we had to look at the labbench for it anyway and we were so confused by Rf values?  Yeah, well that's basically what it is. (Sorry for the side bar.)  Alright back to about today: probably the coolest thing was the filtration method that was used to separate the solid precipitate product from solution.  A filtration flask was hooked up to a vacuum and when the suspended product was poured on top of some filter paper, the liquid was basically sucked out of it and into the flask. After reading that, I think that it was probably a lot cooler then it sounds. I'll most likely be learning how to do a bunch of other stuff throughout the week, so I'll say more about procedures in future posts.

I also found out today that I will be working with an undergraduate student as well as my PI and the grad student I met during my spring break visit to the lab.  I was sort of relieved to hear this because now I know that I'm no the only one in the lab who has only limited experience (plus I can ask him all sorts of questions about Upenn and college, in general). Oh, and one last thing is that my dad drove me into the city today, so I don't have any crazy train stories about how I was reading the wrong schedule or something (Alec, you know what I'm talking about)... yet.

Thanks, 

GabRoss