6/20/2007

Pretty column!

Time to switch roles: usually Ψ*Ψ posts pretty colors and I write the long posts, but I think a lil' change is in order. Temporarily, anyway. (I have a serious lit post coming up, in any case. Plus, people were bitching about the lack of pictures on the last post.) Nono, it's not often I run pretty columns, but I did today. It's wonderful when you're running columns on things that fluoresce under long wave ultraviolet light (365 nm), because you can watch the things come off the column, making life a little easier. Plus, things usually fluoresce pretty violets and blues and greens. Here's a column I was in the middle of running today.

And here it is under a blacklight:


I can't tell you what it is, but I can say that it was a well-run column (a rarity- I kind of suck at running columns, and most of my stuff isn't soluble in anything, which is also annoying). Liquidcarbon also posted a purty column a while back, as did Kyle. Alright, back to work.

9 comments:

Ψ*Ψ said...

Ooh, pretty colors. There's a shortage of those in my life lately, y'know. Except for nickel solutions, maybe.

But you weren't supposed to post today! I was going to post a kitten for your birthday! (we can't be all chemistry all the time, can we?)

Anonymous said...

If one were to put a black light up to my column, it would have glowed blood red. It's savage cool.

Amanda said...

Very nice :o) My best column so far in grad school looked like a tequila sunrise--next time I purify that compound, I'll have to put up a picture. As an undergrad I worked with hypervalent iodine compounds, and they always produced nice purple and orange columns...

MJenks said...

The other day I had a series of tubes that went from lavender to purple to red to deep, deep purple and then a blue color. It was kind of like I had run a column on a sharpie. I had nothing to take a picture with, but it did make me think of CBC.

Excimer said...

A series of tubes? What, you were running a column of the internet?

MJenks said...

Ha, very clever.

A series of fractions in tubes.

Don't try posting witty comments before that intial cup of coffee.

Anonymous said...

Fill the empty fritted column with solvent, run it slowly to prevent vapor expansion in the lower chamber. Begin packing with a quarter inch of Ottawa sand to discourage frit clogging by silica fines. Slurry silica then slowly pour the slurry - with agitation! - into the filled running column. Use a funnel. After the silica load continue running while tapping in opposition with two cork rings. Mark the silica height. When it stops dropping with tapping, you're sweet.

A hack pours his charge onto the silica surface, disrupting it. Better is to add a quarter inch of Ottawa sand. Best of all is to do a teeny bit of glass blowing: Pull some 8 mm tubing into a sudden capillary tip. Take a piece of maybe 3 mm glass cane, heat and flatten the end into a plate, then bend at right angles to the remaining cane. Anneal. Use a sufficiently long cane handle to secure to the dripper with a couple or three twist ties above solvent level. The plate is just under the capillary terminus.

Load 'em up through the gizmo held just above the column surface touching a slim puddle of solvent. The silica surface stays perfect, the band is tight tight. As you run it down the column add solvent through the gizmo to get the load all in there. Then raise the solvent level through the gizmo to where you can pour it in without swirl hitting the silica.

Clean or dump the dripper, save the plate for reuse. May your bands be tighter than Hitlery Ramrod Clinton's bung.

Unknown said...

Man, those bands look perfectly horizontal. I'm jealous.

Happy birthday!

Anonymous said...

Did you run this column or it was a birthday present? :)

Happy birthday!