green

The camera is OK. Nothing spectacular but I think it will do just fine for the blog.

I'm working with some cobalt compounds being ligated with a Grignard pro-ligand. The CoCl2 is pretty typical starting material, and is pure blue when totally anhydrous. When it's wet the color becomes a pink/purple color. The ligand starts with a halide which is reacted with Mg to form the Grignard reagent, all of which are colorless. When the cobalt dichloride and Grignard are mixed the color of the solution turns from blue to deep green in minutes. The final product is pale green color, almost yellow, so there's probably still a lot of impurity in the solution. The first picture is of the solids after stripping the solvent. It looks pretty gooey, but after a bit of scraping its powdery in the bottom of the bomb flask. This material will have to be extracted in order to remove the magnesium salts and unreacted CoCl2. More to come of this in a bit.

problem solved

Procrastination comes through once again. While feverishly losing bids on ebay for a crummy but not too crummy digital camera, I've allowed my cell phone plan to run its course. For simply agreeing to pay a monthly fee for another two years, Verizon will graciously throw in a new phone. Who could pass this up? The little bonus is that the new phone comes with a 1.3 MP camera, more than enough for my blogging needs. We'll try this phone camera out for a while and see if it really is cut out for the job.

It's also come to my attention that I had a series of posts going on both iridium recycling and on building a Schlenk line from scratch, both of which have been neglected. I'll get back around to these soon.

colors and technological needs

My chemistry has turned away from iridium towards cobalt. This means cheaper starting materials and harder characterizations, but it also means a whole new spectrum of colors. I've been getting some really nice blues and greens, some of which are even new products. I made a pretty wierd two coordinate cobalt bis-amide complex which was initially a dark black mess. A little sublimation however, cleaned that right up to a bright green color.

Usually I would have a photo here so that you could enjoy this coloration with me, but I haven't been able to fanagle the camera from home. I think I could benifit greatly from a cheap used camera bought off ebay which I could keep in the lab. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate a camera as cheaply as I'd like which will still take decent quality pictures.

I guess for now you'll just have to trust me that the colors are as nice as I say they are.