so for my senior year we have to do a senior project involving us picking a career and then doing something involing it, ive decided on either a chemist or pharmacist... I was thinking about it and decided that if i could convince a chemistry teacher at my high school to let me use some of their chemicals and equipment i would like to try some chemistry...

looking at it, an Aspirin synthesis doesn't seem incredibly difficult, if i can get the precursors im pretty confident that i could do it.

so Lab Tips, any other novice synths that i could do in the average high school... as much as i would like to try and synth something a bit more interesting than aspirin i don't think they would approve of it...

benzocaine

If your teacher will let you play with acetic anhydride, then sure.

Nitrogen triiodide would be a good demonstration, but you would have to do it in very small amounts so your teacher would feel like safety was being practiced.

Hydrogen filled balloons is a neat demonstration, too.

As for being a pharmacist.... Did you mean pharmacologist? Pharmacists are just "technicians" that work in wal-mart and walgreens. Pharmacology experiment: poison rats, lol.

I think an appropriate synth would be meth.

that is the second ultimate cure,i think,after an exercice workout does not have an efficatious affect toward me that i ex pect it to befrom the instructures point of view.
to me yourself is ultimate,the most
excelent, and to the top of the extreme.

No one here has mentioned esters, so I will. I know benzocaine is an ester but I seriously doubt it would be allowed in high school.

What you could is extract acetyl salicylic acid some store bought aspirin, hydrolyze the acetyl group on it with water yielding a mix of acetic and salicylic acid. From there crystallize the SA then mix with X mols of methanol(work out the stoich from xtals obtained) and add a few ml of sulfuric acid to catalyze. After refluxing that mix for some hours your whole lab will smell of mint from the methyl salicylate produced. Methyl salicylate is an ester and you just performed a fischer esterification.

Or you could order some Butyric acid from a high school catalog. Have students smell it before and then perform a fischer esterification with whatever your choice of alcohol. Butyric acid IMO would be the best carboxylic acid for this demonstration because it smells the worst :) .

LOL good luck getting acetic anhydride.


Another good easy reaction type thing you can do is putting Mg in HCl, and light the resultant H2 for a cool little WHOOMPH.


That was my first reaction, when I was like 14 and I thought it was so damn cool.

What you could is extract acetyl salicylic acid some store bought aspirin, hydrolyze the acetyl group on it with water yielding a mix of acetic and salicylic acid. From there crystallize the SA then mix with X mols of methanol(work out the stoich from xtals obtained) and add a few ml of sulfuric acid to catalyze. After refluxing that mix for some hours your whole lab will smell of mint from the methyl salicylate produced. Methyl salicylate is an ester and you just performed a fischer esterification.


This. Although when we did this, we started just from salicylic acid, and they called it 2-hydroxybenzoic acid so that we could enjoy ourselves writing out the mechanism for the esterification.

If its just a presentation, I would imagine that you could impress anyone just by setting up a reflux, and having it bubble away whilst you talk, just stick some chillis in there and say you're making an analytical capsaicin extract. I'm assuming it isn't a presentation, as it would be rather a long presentation to show the entire synthesis of aspirin, it would take about half an hour at least to end up with solid crystals of clean aspirin.

benzocaine

Yep, you can just start from para-aminobenzoic acid which can be bough in stores or made :)

If your teacher will let you play with acetic anhydride, then sure.

Nitrogen triiodide would be a good demonstration, but you would have to do it in very small amounts so your teacher would feel like safety was being practiced.

I doubt he would be allowed such a thing :(

Hydrogen filled balloons is a neat demonstration, too.

As for being a pharmacist.... Did you mean pharmacologist? Pharmacists are just "technicians" that work in wal-mart and walgreens. Pharmacology experiment: poison rats, lol.

EY! I do pharmacology and i can tell you we do a lot more that poison rats ;) Pharmacology is wonders, being a pharmacist is crap IMO, i helped in pharmacy and giving out viagra to 60 year old man is fucking creepy as fuck :mad::(

I think an appropriate synth would be meth.

Indeed but using the chloroacetone method would be nice, with pictures and all.

that is the second ultimate cure,i think,after an exercice workout does not have an efficatious affect toward me that i ex pect it to befrom the instructures point of view.
to me yourself is ultimate,the most
excelent, and to the top of the extreme.

lol wut



What you could is extract acetyl salicylic acid some store bought aspirin, hydrolyze the acetyl group on it with water yielding a mix of acetic and salicylic acid. From there crystallize the SA then mix with X mols of methanol(work out the stoich from xtals obtained) and add a few ml of sulfuric acid to catalyze. After refluxing that mix for some hours your whole lab will smell of mint from the methyl salicylate produced. Methyl salicylate is an ester and you just performed a fischer esterification.

Or you could order some Butyric acid from a high school catalog. Have students smell it before and then perform a fischer esterification with whatever your choice of alcohol. Butyric acid IMO would be the best carboxylic acid for this demonstration because it smells the worst :) .

I was just about to say the second one, and so i do not seem redundant let me propose this to you:

http://www.mediafire.com/?lmdcsvjbmc0

I have just finished working on it and i should do the hydrogenation next week. Let me know if you want more info :) My lab area smell lovely, Its simple and fast to do. You could show them how different structures effect smell and whatnot :)

Sidenote: going to test a Cu/SiO2 catalyst for the hydrogenation, talked with some SM member(s) and sounds promising :)

I will make a thread about it when i have some damn time :(

LOL good luck getting acetic anhydride.


Another good easy reaction type thing you can do is putting Mg in HCl, and light the resultant H2 for a cool little WHOOMPH.


That was my first reaction, when I was like 14 and I thought it was so damn cool.

When we did this in class, it resulted in many broken test tubes...

Guys, the OP says he is going to ask for the chems from his teacher...I'm sure acetic anhydride will be around that back office somewhere, probably for precisely that synthesis. Also, looking through an old lab notebook from school I see we only needed 3.5mL of the stuff. I would think they would have more of a problem with the 18M H2SO4 my prep calls for. However, according to my notes it did take a considerable amount of time.

A better idea might possibly be the following:

1. Put ~2g salicylic acid and 2mL methanol in test tube.
2. Add 5 drops conc. H2SO4, mix with glass rod, put in 60 degrees C water bath for 5-10 min.
3. slowly pour into 15mL saturated sodium bicarb.
4. Observe the aroma, could pass it around the class if you want.

The smell is mint in this case. You can substitute glacial acetic acid for salicylic acid, and then use either 1-octanol or pentanol for the methanol, if you increase the hot water bath to 80 degrees. These changes result in a citrus-y smell when using octanol and a banana smell when using pentanol.

Obviously not an earth-shattering experiment that will make you look like a fucking magician, but at least the class gets to smell something to get involved, and at the same time your teacher can see you learned something about Chemistry. And it takes a hell of a lot less time.

Guys, the OP says he is going to ask for the chems from his teacher...I'm sure acetic anhydride will be around that back office somewhere, probably for precisely that synthesis. Also, looking through an old lab notebook from school I see we only needed 3.5mL of the stuff. I would think they would have more of a problem with the 18M H2SO4 my prep calls for. However, according to my notes it did take a considerable amount of time.

A better idea might possibly be the following:

1. Put ~2g salicylic acid and 2mL methanol in test tube.
2. Add 5 drops conc. H2SO4, mix with glass rod, put in 60 degrees C water bath for 5-10 min.
3. slowly pour into 15mL saturated sodium bicarb.
4. Observe the aroma, could pass it around the class if you want.

The smell is mint in this case. You can substitute glacial acetic acid for salicylic acid, and then use either 1-octanol or pentanol for the methanol, if you increase the hot water bath to 80 degrees. These changes result in a citrus-y smell when using octanol and a banana smell when using pentanol.

Obviously not an earth-shattering experiment that will make you look like a fucking magician, but at least the class gets to smell something to get involved, and at the same time your teacher can see you learned something about Chemistry. And it takes a hell of a lot less time.
Damn good post man, I've not seen you around here before. You should stick around.

Sidenote: going to test a Cu/SiO2 catalyst for the hydrogenation, talked with some SM member(s) and sounds promising :)

How do you intend to reduce the CuO to Cu? Atmospheric hydrogen was mentioned by klute at SM but i don't get how that kind of reduction can take place.

LOL good luck getting acetic anhydride.


Another good easy reaction type thing you can do is putting Mg in HCl, and light the resultant H2 for a cool little WHOOMPH.


That was my first reaction, when I was like 14 and I thought it was so damn cool.

yea we did that in class when i was in chemistry the year before last... someones test tube ended up breaking... a couple people got surprised at the whoomph, and dropped them, but the class was full of idiots anyways... we were heating some acid which i cant recall and the teacher was explaining about how the vapors will irritate the eyes and repository system but all this one kid heard was "acid", walks over to the container being heated and takes a big breath of it after saying "im gonna trip balls" and then falls over in pain...

benzocaine seems like a decent suggestion, ive heard about the relative ease of the synth but never really looked up on it...

yea we did that in class when i was in chemistry the year before last... someones test tube ended up breaking... a couple people got surprised at the whoomph, and dropped them, but the class was full of idiots

Yup.


anyways... we were heating some acid which i cant recall and the teacher was explaining about how the vapors will irritate the eyes and repository system but all this one kid heard was "acid", walks over to the container being heated and takes a big breath of it after saying "im gonna trip balls" and then falls over in pain...


Fucking LOL

How do you intend to reduce the CuO to Cu? Atmospheric hydrogen was mentioned by klute at SM but i don't get how that kind of reduction can take place.

That is exactly what i am doing. To be honest, he hasn't tried it yet, so i am playing the guinea pig from what i understand :)
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=10704

This thread has all the info you need for the catalyst. What i like about it is that it saves me from using my Pd/C, that i have only a few grams left!

Little refs for who wanted it:

Cu/SiO2: an improved catalyst for the chemoselective hydrogenation of a,b-unsaturated ketones
Nicoletta Ravasio, Marisa Antenori, Michele Gargano and Piero Mastrorilli
Tetrahedron Letters 37(20), 3529-3532 (1996)

.

benzocaine seems like a decent suggestion, ive heard about the relative ease of the synth but never really looked up on it...

I did a whole thread on it, search this forum. I have done some more work on it too, if your interested bumb up the old thread.

No one here has mentioned esters, so I will. I know benzocaine is an ester but I seriously doubt it would be allowed in high school.

What you could is extract acetyl salicylic acid some store bought aspirin, hydrolyze the acetyl group on it with water yielding a mix of acetic and salicylic acid. From there crystallize the SA then mix with X mols of methanol(work out the stoich from xtals obtained) and add a few ml of sulfuric acid to catalyze. After refluxing that mix for some hours your whole lab will smell of mint from the methyl salicylate produced. Methyl salicylate is an ester and you just performed a fischer esterification.

Or you could order some Butyric acid from a high school catalog. Have students smell it before and then perform a fischer esterification with whatever your choice of alcohol. Butyric acid IMO would be the best carboxylic acid for this demonstration because it smells the worst :) .

I was allowed to synth benzocaine for my E.E.

After extracting countless shit from plants.

That is exactly what i am doing. To be honest, he hasn't tried it yet, so i am playing the guinea pig from what i understand :)

Start up a thread on it!

What about nylon 6.6? (It might be 6.10, I can't remember which...) It's a REALLY cool synth, especially if you do it right, and it is relatively easy.

Damn good post man, I've not seen you around here before. You should stick around.

Thanks, I visit here fairly often, but I tend to just read...I'll try to offer my 2 cents worth a little more often here, I guess!

Start up a thread on it!

I will, actually i have benn saying so for the last days :( Other work has kept me busy, but i will try to get it done by today (the first part atleast!

I made Aspirin in my first lab in first year chemistry.

I did terrible with percent yield. I had like... a 57% yield (which was pretty bad).

Good luck getting acetic anhydride. If you do, tell me where you got it. Making it isn't that hard, as long as you have some heat and pressure (I think).

I made Aspirin in my first lab in first year chemistry.

I did terrible with percent yield. I had like... a 57% yield (which was pretty bad).

Good luck getting acetic anhydride. If you do, tell me where you got it. Making it isn't that hard, as long as you have some heat and pressure (I think).

im hoping they have some laying around in some closet for the aspirin synth for an AP chem class or just a lab they no longer do in everyday chemistry class. would it be impossible for a chemistry teacher to order a small amount of it? i imagine it wouldn't look very suspicious, most people know it has more uses than for making aspirin but if a school is ordering it it could be assumed they were making aspirin...

im hoping they have some laying around in some closet for the aspirin synth for an AP chem class or just a lab they no longer do in everyday chemistry class. would it be impossible for a chemistry teacher to order a small amount of it? i imagine it wouldn't look very suspicious, most people know it has more uses than for making aspirin but if a school is ordering it it could be assumed they were making aspirin...

You can make acetic anhydride or even buy it (and you would not believe where!). For making it look on SM, there is quite a bit of info on there!

You can make acetic anhydride or even buy it (and you would not believe where!). For making it look on SM, there is quite a bit of info on there!

not quite sure which site SM is...

The acetic anyhydride production on SM is almost entirely made up of the ketene route or acetyl chloride route. There is an abundance of information about both of those processes and the synthesis of acetyl chloride.

However All of the methods I have seen are limited to but the most equipped laboratories. I mean college organic laboratories, not high school ones.


Ask your teacher whats restricted. I can almost guarantee you that acetic anhydride in any amount is restricted in all schools, including yours. That means even if you somehow manage to come by some it cannot come in with you through the doors of your school. Not 500 ml, not 100 ml, not 1 ml.

I have a question for you, Why are you so dead set and determined to make aspirin when there are so many better reactions you can do for demonstrations? No one will commend or extol you for a little bit of white precipitate falling out of solution my friend. You know what they want; they want visual, audiological, smelly reactions.

The acetic anyhydride production on SM is almost entirely made up of the ketene route or acetyl chloride route. There is an abundance of information about both of those processes and the synthesis of acetyl chloride.

However All of the methods I have seen are limited to but the most equipped laboratories. I mean college organic laboratories, not high school ones.


Ask your teacher whats restricted. I can almost guarantee you that acetic anhydride in any amount is restricted in all schools, including yours. That means even if you somehow manage to come by some it cannot come in with you through the doors of your school. Not 500 ml, not 100 ml, not 1 ml.

I have a question for you, Why are you so dead set and determined to make aspirin when there are so many better reactions you can do for demonstrations? No one will commend or extol you for a little bit of white precipitate falling out of solution my friend. You know what they want; they want visual, audiological, smelly reactions.

im not really dead set on aspirin, the entire project consist of making some product from the "career" you choose, a certain amount of time with the facilitator from that career, and a paper involving it.

do you have any suggestions?

im not really dead set on aspirin, the entire project consist of making some product from the "career" you choose, a certain amount of time with the facilitator from that career, and a paper involving it.

do you have any suggestions?

Look at my flavor stuff! Its dead easy! You can even stop and not do the hydrogenation (just condensation of vanillin and acetone) and have a cool product!


not quite sure which site SM is...

http://www.sciencemadness.org/ wicked chem forum!

You can make acetic anhydride or even buy it (and you would not believe where!). For making it look on SM, there is quite a bit of info on there!
hush, you.



And jamaica, SM is science madness boards.

im not really dead set on aspirin, the entire project consist of making some product from the "career" you choose, a certain amount of time with the facilitator from that career, and a paper involving it.

do you have any suggestions?

I do, but I need to know your choice of career. What type of chemistry do you like the most. For me its synthetic organic chemistry. Specifically the total synthesis and simplification synthesis(E.g no protection groups and lesser steps) of natural compounds for health benefits.

Look at my flavor stuff! Its dead easy! You can even stop and not do the hydrogenation (just condensation of vanillin and acetone) and have a cool product!

I'm looking, but I can't seem to find the thread on it you promised. :confused:

hush, you.



And jamaica, SM is science madness boards.

;)....ok :(

I'm looking, but I can't seem to find the thread on it you promised. :confused:

About benzocaine or flavours? The flavours one i yet have to do, but the benzocaine one is still there!

Yep, you can just start from para-aminobenzoic acid which can be bough in stores or made :)



I doubt he would be allowed such a thing

Hydrogen filled balloons is a neat demonstration, too.



EY! I do pharmacology and i can tell you we do a lot more that poison rats ;) Pharmacology is wonders, being a pharmacist is crap IMO, i helped in pharmacy and giving out viagra to 60 year old man is fucking creepy as fuck :mad:



Indeed but using the chloroacetone method would be nice, with pictures and all.



lol wut



I was just about to say the second one, and so i do not seem redundant let me propose this to you:

http://www.mediafire.com/?lmdcsvjbmc0

I have just finished working on it and i should do the hydrogenation next week. Let me know if you want more info :) My lab area smell lovely, Its simple and fast to do. You could show them how different structures effect smell and whatnot :)

Sidenote: going to test a Cu/SiO2 catalyst for the hydrogenation, talked with some SM member(s) and sounds promising :)

I will make a thread about it when i have some damn time :(

im not really dead set on aspirin, the entire project consist of making some product from the "career" you choose, a certain amount of time with the facilitator from that career, and a paper involving it.

do you have any suggestions?

Fuck it, just have fun; claim that you want to be a bomb disposal expert or a military explosives operator. Or an 'experimental reconstruction forensics police officer', in this case working on some evil terrorist making peroxides ;), just bullshit your way into being able to fuck around with a few bangs and flashes.

Also see the first video in the 'oxyacetylene experiment gone wrong' or something in BB. Aim for that.

If you're still dead set on doing something pharmacology related, if you have to do it within a certain time period, e.g. that of a presentation, do a few esters that smell and hand em round to huff, claim they can be useful intermediates to various more useful molecules. If you have time to do stuff before hand and just do a presentation on the reaction, benzocaine looks slightly more impressive due to the reflux and the NP extraction at the end.

At least* both me and SoH have a feckload of pictures on benzocaine, both having done the reaction to boredom, so just shout and one of us will post a few I'm sure.

*e.g. probably more people have had a wang at it.

I do, but I need to know your choice of career. What type of chemistry do you like the most. For me its synthetic organic chemistry. Specifically the total synthesis and simplification synthesis(E.g no protection groups and lesser steps) of natural compounds for health benefits.

have you seen Baran's paper in nature then?

Yup, a synthetic organic paper in fucking Nature man... You know it's got to be some good shit!!

Total synthesis with no protecting groups whatsoever - they actually coax some unusual reactivity that would never have been observed if they went through a typical PG route...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7134/pdf/nature05569.pdf



if you have to do it within a certain time period, e.g. that of a presentation


I actually got the impression that this was kind of a research project type deal, where he'd have a few weeks to get there, in which case doing something like a 20 min esterification, or a nylon synth is going to make him look pretty stupid...

I actually got the impression that this was kind of a research project type deal, where he'd have a few weeks to get there, in which case doing something like a 20 min esterification, or a nylon synth is going to make him look pretty stupid...

Yeah, I got that impression too, but I wasn't gonna just assume that he'd have the time to do something more interesting. Either way, if he was really desperate he could probably milk a really piss simple experiment like that with enough bullshitting - our AS level biology practical involved adding yeast soln to H2O2.

have you seen Baran's paper in nature then?

Yup, a synthetic organic paper in fucking Nature man... You know it's got to be some good shit!!

Total synthesis with no protecting groups whatsoever - they actually coax some unusual reactivity that would never have been observed if they went through a typical PG route...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7134/pdf/nature05569.pdf






I actually got the impression that this was kind of a research project type deal, where he'd have a few weeks to get there, in which case doing something like a 20 min esterification, or a nylon synth is going to make him look pretty stupid...

Thanks for that, its freaking amazing! Never heard of it before!

the time frame for this entire project is basically the entire school year... they started talking about it the end of last year so they could start it as soon as we get back.

While I do find the paper interesting I'm working on a completely different family.



OP- Work with coordination complexes. If you don't know what those are look it up.