Description of Orgo Lab Final
Yonah Ziemba
Hi Everyone,
A friend of mine took the Orgo lab practical final today, and described what it was like.The description was helpful in knowing how to prepare, so see below.
And Good Luck!
Yonah
Here goes:
Each student got a different mixture to seperate. Among all the students, there were approx. 14 different mixtures. Everyone I saw had to do a 1-base extraction and then recrystallization, with a mixture of polar and non polar solvents. So everyone had to use the separatory funnel, identify the different layers and then perform a recrystallization with the aqueous layer and dry the organic layer on the steam cone. Then we have to run a TLC plate.
The 1-base extraction is basically the same as what we did to separate aspirin and caffeine during the goody's lab. Also, the non polar solvent is CH2CL2. You don't have to figure out what it is- they give it to us!
There was no distillation or column chromatography.
You should bring your regular lab notebook, calculator and a pencil/pen. Make sure to have a pencil for marking the TLC plate. They don't let you bring any handouts or regular notes, but you can use your regular lab notebook that contains notes from the previous experiments.
They grade you on whether your compounds have properly separated. They have a whole grading rubric created so that no TA's can have any favoritism. They award points for technique, percent yield, TLC plate appearance, and purity of compound (which they will test later on), among other things. They provide you with a write up sheet in which you write out the list of what you did along with your percent yield and you draw your TLC plate out.
