Chemistry Fun Times

So sadly CHEM30013, Chemical Research Project, has come to a close! I had my final presentation over one week ago and also turned in a final report! WOW! The experience has been an amazing one and I'd just like to take the opportunity again to thank the OSA Foundation for supporting me in my studies at the University of Melbourne. 

I’ll just give you a quick summary of what I did during my project…

I was looking to synthesize and characterize some novel coordination polymers, which can be used for applications like gas absoprtion, heterogeneous catalysis, molecular sieving... I ended up finding 3 new structures! I had two variations of a stacked copper sheet with different anions and then a quadruple interpenetrating diamond-like network (also with copper centers). Here are some nice, pictures that I used in my talk!

My stacked sheets (only 3 sheets are shown in the picture, but imagine an infinite number stacked in the same fashion). Note that each color represents a different sheet (again, 3 total) and you can easily see the stacking pattern is ABA...(red, blue, green). I said that I had two variations of this sheet. What makes the two sheets different is the anions that reside within those channels.

To better show what is meant by quadruple interpenetration, this figure shows how we start with a single adamantane like unit and progressively add more until we get to the quadruple interpenetrating structure. How can you tell that it is interpenetrating? If you look at the top right, for instance, notice how the green structure passes in front and behind the red one. Similarly, if you move to the bottom left, you'll see that the green passes in front of the red and blue and behind the red and blue in the back.

The week after the projects finished up (this past Thursday!) I went to the 3rd year chemistry dinner. My chem buddy, Miriam, met me at my place to get ready. From there we headed over to University House, which I think is like Uni Melb’s equivalent of Caltech’s Athenaeum. It was super fancy inside! When we got there, everyone was just talking and having drinks, so we both grabbed some champagne and went to talk to our other chem buddies Christine and Crystal!

For the CHEM30013 project, Marcus and I both worked with Professor Abrahams (on different projects).

We had a three course meal with some of the chemistry professors, who rotated tables every course. For the first course, I sat next to Prof. Bieske and Prof. Wille (both of them taught part of the Computational Chemistry module for my topics class). 

Professor Bieske, Miriam, myself

For the next course, I sat next to a post doc named Amber (from the Schiesser group I think), who was actually from the States as well. It was kind of cool to talk to her because she had a lot of interesting things to say about working in Australia and being a woman in chemistry. What was most intriguing was that she decided to do her postdoc here at Uni Melb and has decided to move to Australia permanently!

For dessert, I sat with Prof. Paul Donnelly and Prof. Richard O’Hair. The two of them together were pretty funny, just like Bieske and Wille. Donnelly told us a little bit about how he got into chemistry. It was interesting because after undergrad he took some time off to travel through Europe for several months and then worked in industry for another few months before deciding to go back to university.

Some of the professors’ stories definitely got me thinking about my plans for the future! Currently I am in the middle of applying for grad schools and fellowships! It will be interesting to see what happens!

Stephanie