Writing about: FSAC, 10/02/05, Group IV

Didn’t get into the Fast Stream. Oh well.

Finding out so quickly means that I must have messed something up badly at the assessment centre – Not shown one of the criteria that they’re after adequately.

Although I’m disappointed about this, obviously, it’s in some ways rather a relief – at least I know now, and can get on with looking at the alternatives.

I rather enjoy demonstrating, especially to 1st years. It’s hard work, but there’s so much to teach them. Not like the second years who think that they know what’s going on, or the third years that mostly do know what’s going on…

Today’s sport: “annotating” their labcoats. In my undergrad days, everybody’s lab coat was already covered with scrawls by this point in the first year, so for tradition’s sake, I thought that this lot should be too.

So now there are a selection of labcoats proclaiming love for Chemical weapons, southampton (and luton and watford and coventry), a McChemist, A filthy Sergeant,¹ and an enigmatic “A-Ha!”.²

I really like the way that it’s easy to meet people³ on your course in chemistry. I did a year of physucks before swapping, and knew hardly anyone there. I knew everyone on my chemistry year by the end of the first year. It’s the labs. A shared trauma, exacerbated by nutters like me demonstrating :-)

So. It’s been fun. I don’t think I’ll be able to do any more demonstrating this year (and hence, probably ever) – that whole PhD thing getting in the way. Might try and get on the 3rd year organometallics though. Depends on how my catalysts treat me I guess.

<sub>1. But not Jam/Jan, who’s already taken.
2. I realised after the event that “A-Ha!” might not be particularly appropriate given her b/f’s name. Ooops.
3. And more… Chemistry is probably the most incestuous subject at Warwick. And everybody knows everything that’s going on.</sub>

“Catalyst design”, meaning the rational invention of a well-defined active species for a targeted application, is often associated with the metallocene and post-metallocene breakthroughs in stereoselective olefin polymerization. The rapid and apparently endless implementation of new catalysts, leading to an amazing variety of largely unprecedented homopolymer and copolymer architectures, is actually perceived as a most convincing demonstration of the said association. In reality, designing one such catalyst from scratch is still a dream, and behind all reported discoveries is the classical mix of hard work and serendipity.

G. Talarico, V. Busico and L. Cavallo, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2003, 125, 7172–73.

Ok. I’m polymerising ethene, and typically use between 10 and 0.2 mg of catalyst. The problems are:

• It takes an more than an hour to set up a reaction, including sorting out the glassware, setting up the computer, measuring up the catalyst, making up solutions and getting things stirring.


• It takes an hour to run a reaction.


• If a reaction goes nuts, I need to sit with it to drop ice into a waterbath to stop it blowing up. Which is boring.


• 0.2 mg of catalyst is fuck all of fuck all, so it’s easy to kill it off inadvertently.


• If a reaction produces nothing, you’re never quite sure if that’s because the catalyst isn’t really a catalyst, or because you’ve broken something – used a wet cannula, or left something provocative on the reactor that didn’t come off when you cleaned it. This is boring, because it’s very hard to accept a negative result.


• It takes an hour or two to clean up after a run. More if you’ve got frickin’ low molecular weight PE adhered to your glassware.

Summary: I can only really do one reaction a day if I want to be able to do anything else. If a reaction yields nothing (like today), it’s tempting to re-run it, especially if you think that the catalyst really should have been active. If it yields nothing again, then you’ve wasted a day, which is just lovely.

I’m bored of doing poly runs. Very very bored.

Writing about web page http://southparkstudios.com/games/create.html

I didn’t feel it was appropriate to reveal the people I work with in too much detail :-)

Writing about web page http://smurman.best.vwh.net/soga/misc/research.html

Allegedly from:
Graham, Jr., C. D., Metal Progress 71, 5 1957

A Dictionary of Useful Research Phrases

Research Phrase	Translation
It has long been known…	I didn’t look up the original reference.
A definite trend is evident…	These data are are practically meaningless.
Of great theoretical and practical importance…	Interesting to me.
While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to these questions…	An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study…	The results of the others didn’t make any sense.
Typical results are shown…	The best results are shown.
These results will be shown in a subsequent report…	I might get around to this sometime if I’m pushed.
The most reliable results are those obtained by Jones…	He was my graduate assistant.
It is believed that…	I think.
It is generally believed that…	A couple of other people think so too.
It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of the phenomenon occurs…	I don’t understand it.
Correct within an order of magnitude…	Wrong.
It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field…	This is a lousy paper, but so are all the others on this miserable topic.
Thanks are due to Joe Blotz for assistance with the experiment and to George Frink for valuable discussions…	Blotz did the work and Frink explained to me what it meant.
A careful analysis of obtainable data…	Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of beer.

Writing about web page http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/doilookup?in_doi=10.1021/ic0352250

... is getting pictures like this in your publications

So, I got an interesting email yesterday, from someone I’d met at a conference last year (edited to protect the innocent):

I hear from my supervisor, ..., (just as I have almost finished a poster on my fantastic new catalyst…) that you’ve made the exact same one! (Noooooooooooooo! My only decent result in three years!) Most upsetting, all that work and now I’ve got to present the damn phenoxyimine stuff again. He could have said BEFORE I spent 2 hours typing!

All very exciting. Plan is now to publish a joint paper with her, to save on AcademicBitchFights later. Seems like I’ve made a lot more progress on these systems than she has, I’ve been working on it for longer, and I’ve pushed it further. We’re interested what they’ll bring to the party.

But on the plus side, that does mean that I’m now starting to write my very own paper, which I’m quite excited about. I enjoy writing stuff, and with this topic, I’ve actually got some stuff to say, which is nice :-)

(Originally written 2004–06-23 18:40:05)

Poster finished, which is nice. Finally got it printed, but Powerpoint had helpfully decided that I didn’t really want to have any atom labels on one diagram, so I filled them in by hand..
Presentation was today too – mostly very dull. A few academics wandering around, spoke to Stefan at some length, who had some interesting ideas and some impracticable ones too.

I like:

• The idea of injecting hexene in the middle of an ethylene run, and seeing if the ethylene rate is modified.


• Adding an amount of a known tight-PDi PE to a run, to see if it’s modified, which would suggest a radical mechanism

An important point is that I really need to separate k_p from everything else that’s going on in the system. This will get into some hairy kinetics, probably, but may well end up being important. Must discuss with Pete.
Now just have to write my report for next weds, and all will be happy.

(Originally written 2004–06-21 16:34)
Just in case I should forget again, this is how BAr^F works.