It's been a while again since I last wrote, as I was pretty busy in the last days. The weekend before last, I was at a softball and baseball match, playing together with members from my lab against two other labs. This was part of a cooperation between the groups, which are all three leading in the domain of photochemical catalysis and artificial photosynthesis.
It was the first time I actually played softball, or baseball, but it turns out to be a really fun game. The only downside is standing for long times on the field without really moving (in defense, I guess). It was a pretty cold and windy day, so in addition to having light sportswear only, it felt like freezing alive... The first match started around 10 in the morning, and with the pitch being at the other end of Tokyo, I had to get up pretty early (2.5 hours travel!!). Not only was it a lot of fun to play baseball, our lab even managed to win one match (we got a cup, out of which the professors downed a beer at the party held in the evening).
*I will add pics once I get some*
Sunday was a pretty painful waking, as I had managed to fall during baseball the day before and rip open my hip. Furthermore, I had sore muscles in my arm at places I didn't know there were any :P
The next week was productive (and the pain went away rapidly), I started two multi step syntheses of photocatalytic complexes. One of the complexes is based on rhenium, the other on ruthenium. I learned how expensive the starting materials are a few days ago, and it's around 7000 $ per gram for the ruthenium, the rhenium is even more expensive. If you are interested in investments in raw materials or rare metals, consider these two as viable alternatives to gold or silver.
Of course, the very high price and scarcity of ruthenium and rhenium make limit the applicability of their use in photocatalysis on a large scale. A few members of the lab are therefore investigating alternative metals for the reactions. It is really interesting to see how well the lab is organized in the context of research: based on knowledge accumulated over the past 15 years, the most promising results are developed and research is expanded to several specialities, with two or three students per speciality. There are long-term goals (ex. alternative metal complexes with same efficiency), that build up on the research already conducted and they are approached step by step. This is the first time I see this structure in a research group (although I am sure that other groups do something similar).Anyways, by the weekend after baseball, I had successfully performed three ligand substitutions. The hard part, purification, was on Monday and Tuesday. I spent 13 hours at the lab on Monday, 9 of which on a flash chromatography! The time-consuming step of the purification was the necessity of measuring a mass spectrum of each fraction. But, it was worth it! :) End of the week, I had my products with high purity and an acceptable yield (40 % over 3 steps, which isn't too bad for me). And the best thing: very intensive and beautiful colours of my products give them even an aesthetic value. That's the way chemistry should be!
I even got an autograph (don't know exactly from whom though, but he was a good boarder), first one I ever got. Perhaps I will be hanging it to my wall here, it's better than plain white.
On Sunday morning, there was an earthquake that shook me awake. After checking out the info on the USGS site (http://comcat.cr.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000kvca#summary), I found the epicenter to be located exactly at the place we had been playing baseball the weekend before. That can't be a coincidence!! :o
We held our presentation on Switzerland I had mentioned in an earlier post. We decided not to include the wonderful video suggested by an enthusiastic reader (although it was mesmerizing), however I bought some chocolate at the Lindt shop in Shibuya and distributed it during the talk. Everyone loved it! (no surprise there).This Wednesday, I joined a trip to the Asahi Glass factory as a part of my SJCI class. We took the bus through Tokyo, passing through the harbour on our way to Asahi. It was a long trip, over two hours to go and nearly three to return. Once there, we visited a plant that produced giant glass panes through the so-called glass float technique. We could take a look into the oven (1600 degrees!) and it appeared like two dragons were in there, spitting fire (in fact, they were giant burners). Unfortunately, no picture-taking was allowed.
I am busy, as you can read. The workload will probably increase even more, as I will be presenting my work to the group in 3 weeks and need many more results still. I will try to find some time to post a little more, and certainly upload some photos from baseball! I hope you enjoyed reading and watching.
Stay tuned!
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