Bristol

"[Learning] promotes one's innate power"

So it's been a while since I've blogged, mainly because I am far too busy with actual chemistry to do it (and a little socialising inbetween), and also because I haven't had much to say.

However to start off a new year I thought I would write a little about my experience at Bristol university... it's been such a busy time that I can't really sum up how it's been other than saying it is brilliant.

I love the city, I think it's absolutely beautiful, infact one of my favourite days was when I had just finished my lab on magnetochemistry (putting things in tubes and measuring their magnetic moments) which took 1/3 of the time set aside for it, and I realised I had lost my jacket. I went down to the porter's desk and asked if him if he had seen my jacket, which he had and he gave it to me, offering me a pair of gloves he had also found. I declined the gloves but couldn't help myself when he offered me sandwiches that the cafe couldn't keep until Monday, so I walked off with a bag worth £9.50 in sandwiches. As I looked out of the glass wall I suddenly noticed it was snowing (this was the first lot of snow England had this winter) and my day just couldn't get any better. Walking to the bus stop I took a shortcut through Royal Fort Lodge gardens which looked amazing in the snow.

Anyway after a couple of weeks I still couldn't get over how beautiful Bristol looks in snow, especially across the Downs in the morning.

I often go through Royal Fort Gardens and the other day I was there with Beth and a squirrel scampered right up to us and eyed us up, perhaps wondering if we would be suitable to climb?

Then we sat on a bench where a robin joined us and kept flitting from end to end of the bench looking at us and singing... but whenever we tried to take a photo it flew away. Wildlife in inner cities is always surprising... they seem so used to people and just so... unfased.

I feel I should add some chemical relevance to this post, so here it is:

I have just revised all of my quantum mechanics. It was not fun, but it only took me 2 hours and then I watched a terribly sad episode of House to relax.

I think that's enough for now.

Searching for scents

A year ago I was asked to do an Extended Project Qualification by my chemistry teacher, Miss Cahillane. After a lot of deliberation over what to write about, I read a ChemistryWorld magazine looking for inspiration. I was attracted to the magazine in the first place due to the pretty pink front cover with the title "Perfumes The quest for fresh scents" I scanned through all the articles until I got to the perfume one in the middle.

As I read Emma Davies's "The sweet scent of success" I knew that I really wanted to write my 5000 word essay on that.

After months of research and planning, I began to write my essay starting with how we got to where we are now in the perfume world.
Perfumes are ancient, they have been used since Ancient Egyptian times for embalming the dead, for bathing in Ancient Rome, as gifts to the newborn Jesus in the Bible.

One of the biggest chemical advances in perfumery was made by Avicenna, aka Ibn Sina.
He discovered that by heating roses with steam and distilling the vapour that was produced. He called it rosewater. In fact, they still use this method in industries to make essential oils, even if it is a bit more advanced than Avicenna's version.
Nowadays oils are less common than synthetic chemicals in perfumes for many reasons:

• It is really expensive to grow all the plants to distill the oils, and quite ineffective, for example
• 7,926 mint leaves just for one bottle! I mean, this is mass produced as well, how much mint must they grow?


• Synthetic perfume molecules can be controlled, so the odour is much more consistent, making the products more consistent (if not better) in quality.


• Perfumes are also becoming much more experimental, so there is a huge market for brand new smells, rather than replications of natural smells.
  

A bit more chemistry to think about when making the molecules:

• When you're wearing a perfume, the last thing you want is for it to wear off within minutes, so the molecule has to release the vapour slowly, which can be done by reactions under very subtle conditions, for example a slow reaction occurring in sunlight


• How biodegradeable they are. With climate change and environmental-friendliness as the big thing of the moment, the molecules have to break down once they've been released, or else it could cause environmental damage, then again they can't break down too quickly or your perfume will last only seconds. It's a fine balance.
  
• Some perfume molecules can react with enzymes on the skin to make malodorants, which are the worst thing you'd want your perfume to do. Malodorants are toxic, cause nausea and block your olfactory nerves (the ones you smell with). So basically your perfume would be harmful AND stop you from being able to smell anything.
  
• Some molecules are allergens, and new EU law means that perfumers can't use anything that could potentially be an allergen, I mean that's a little strict. That's like saying we mustn't use wheat in ANY food because someone out there may be allergic (like my sister).

Basically that was my introduction, ok so it had a little more sciency stuff but you get the gist, hopefully.

Rubies are super hard!

My birthday is very, very soon, it's the 7th of July and I will be 18 finally!
Did you know that rubies are the birthstone for July? ...ok so you probably did, but me being the ChemNerd that I am I thought I would look into the chemistry behind rubies.

Rubies are the most stable form of corundum, which is a crystalline form of aluminium oxide (Al2O3), if the corundum is red it gets called a ruby, if it is ANY other colour it is called a sapphire!

So with a ruby's colour, what happens is some of the Al3+ ions are replaced by Cr3+ ions and each chromium ion has six O2- ligands, which cause an energy jump in the d-orbital electrons, which results in the absorption of yellow-green light giving the gem a red colour! In other terms what happens is the six oxygen ions surround the chromium ions and give them their spare pair of electrons, which affects the chromium's electrons, which results in the colour absorption.
This diamond ring from Tiffany & Co. costs £4,552,500... (feel free to buy it for me)
Ok, you know how diamond is like the hardest thing in the world, well its got an Moh mineral hardness of 10.0, and rubies are the 3rd hardest mineral with an Moh of 9.0, so they are pretty damn hard.