Hello everyone!

 

This third week started off slower for me but picked up in pace later. Some highlights are:

Monday – I wasn’t in the lab today, as I was working on the Project Description assignment with the help of my mentor, Wei Ping, and continued to read the DoE proposal by Dr. Haotian Wang. He was also working diligently on his thesis proposal presentation, so the day worked out for both of us.

Tuesday – Tuesdays are always a day I look forward to. I enjoy meeting with Dr. Zafar and Dr. Clay, they have been supportive and thorough throughout the program! I found the OURI inclusive workshop to be intriguing, and the entrepreneurship presentation by Dr. Peña to be engaging. This day, I was able to meet up with some of the other REU interns to have lunch together and catch up. I got back to the SST building and watched my mentor practice his thesis presentation. The presentation gave me a lot of information on why I’m doing the experiments I’m doing, what impact this lab has on the environment, and what exact experiments I will be conducting. Overall, I really enjoyed tuning in on the presentation! Once in the lab, we ran a “Dummy Test” to go over the procedures of assembling the flow cell, prepping the anolyte and catholyte, then running the voltage and gas chromatography machine.

Wednesday – This was the first time I did an entire lab experiment run by myself. It took about 4 hours, but I was proud of myself for being able to complete the experiment and refer to the pictures and notes I took. Since in this experiment I used a catalyst that was applied unevenly and old, I had to retry the next day with my own automatically sprayed catalyst. My mentor also presented his thesis to the committee, and I was glad to hear that he passed!

Thursday – I ran a second lab experiment by myself to compare the results from Wednesday’s run. This time, it only took around 3 hours! I was happy to see I’m starting to engrave the routine and look forward to trying new varied experiments. The Wang Group also had a meeting today, there I met another undergraduate student named Brianna who was extremely welcoming. We were able to discuss how big the lab group is and what each subgroup focuses on, as well as how interesting the on-campus housing is at Rice University.

Friday – Right now I’m in the process of testing my hypothesis by first synthesizing a different copper doped catalyst using gold(III) acetate. Although I’m hoping for as-expected results, I am at peace with knowing this specific catalyst may not give the expected result (that it produces a high amount of acetic acid). I can use this to find that this specific compound with the copper nanocubes do not produce a higher amount of acetic acid and move onto the next compound! My mentor also gave me some practice in analyzing my NMR results from Thursday’s experiment.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my week and I’m feeling more comfortable and confident in the lab. These weeks are going by very quick, so I’m trying to absorb as much as I can and enjoy the moment before August 2nd!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading!

Chloe