End of Week 2- Alec Mitchell

Despite it being a Monday, today is actually the last day of my second week at Columbia. Over these two weeks a lot has changed, but some things have also stayed the same.

To start, the changes:

1. Now when Zak, my grad student, introduces me to people, I've gone from "the kid who actually chose to volunteer in one of the three most dangerous labs on campus" to simply being a "minion" as all volunteers/undergrads are now called.

2. I've been able to do a lot of experiments either by myself or with significantly less grad student supervision.

3. I've gotten better at my grad student's random pop quizzes

4. Zak has actually started telling me I should go home because I'm staying so late

5. The experiments have gotten cooler, but with that the waiting time also increases. As Zak says, "a good chemist will be able to time experiments so that they can run one while waiting for another."

As for whats been going on in the lab, having the new glove box set up is really helpful. I've gotten to spin even more CdSe films, and see the results of pumping a vaccum on them while heating. After spinning those dots, I also recovered them from aluminum foil and cleaned them (I'll test the results tomorrow). Today I saw Cadmium Myristate made (it's a reagent for making the CdSe nanocrystals) as well. Throughout the week I have been testing a large amount of films using the UV-Vis spectrometer, which allows us to see changes in absorbency in the dots before and after they are spun. After that, I tried redissolving some of the films in toluene to see if the absorbency shifted back. Even though the results weren't clean enough to publish, it was clear that they did make somewhat of a shift back.

Just to be clear, for the last two weeks my lab has been in "crisis mode." The PI is going to the biggest conference that he will ever go to in his life and having his tenure go on trial (or so I've been told). Because of this, the lab has been scrambling for figures to put on his poster, and I have gotten to see a lot of the processes that happen in the lab.

My specific project should now be considered to be "projects." I am going to experiment with different concentrations in both Cd to Se ratios and Quantum Dots in solution. Just talking with the PI and my grad student, we have come up with a variety of projects that I can try.

Throughout my lab experience so far, I have learned more Chemistry than ever before. Not only do I get to work in the lab and be mentored by Zak, but I also get to attend group meetings (which are like presentations about what people are doing in our lab) and even lectures from scientists visiting Columbia. It's like getting the best education possible for a high school student just for volunteering. It's hard to believe that I'm almost halfway done already.

- Alec