08:47 – I switched over this morning from air conditioning to heating. It was under 68F (20C) in the house, and the high today is to be only 50F (10C), with lows tonight in the low 40’s (~ 5C). This cool snap is to last only a few days. We’ll soon be back to needing neither heating nor air conditioning.
Barbara was stunned when she read in the newspaper this morning that one of her co-workers died in a house fire over the weekend. She said today would be tough at work. The woman who died was well-known and well-liked throughout the firm.
Today is a federal holiday, so USPS won’t be delivering. I’ll batch up the kits ordered yesterday, today, and tomorrow morning, and ship them all tomorrow. Today, I’ll spend some time in the lab making up solutions for the biology kits. As I’ve mentioned before, my natural tendency is to use the oh-my-god-we’re-out inventory method. So yesterday I checked inventory against the chemical makeup instructions and found I was out of Eosin Y and Crystal Violet. I just ordered enough of both to make up two liters of each stain.
Fortunately, our filling method means we always have a few left over. For example, the kits include 15 mL each of the Hucker’s Crystal Violet stain and the Eosin Y stain. I make up one liter of each of those at a time, and label 60 bottles for each. We actually get about 66 bottles from a liter, so we typically have six bottles left unlabeled. After we’ve filled bottles, I print the extra labels we need and label the extra bottles. So as of now I have half a dozen bottles of each of those stains still in stock. That means I can make up half a dozen biology kits pretty quickly if we run out before the next batch of 30 is ready.
10:57 – That worked out well. As Barbara and her sister clear out their parents’ old home, Barbara is bringing home stuff her parents don’t want but that she wants or thinks I might want. Saturday, she brought me something I didn’t know existed: a 2-liter polypropylene measuring cup. I’m using that today to make up stuff I need two liters of, including Benedict’s reagent, Barfoed’s reagent, biuret reagent, and so on.
Ordinarily, I just make up stuff that I need in 2-liter quantities in 2-liter soda bottles. (I’ve established where the 2-liter index line falls on soda bottles, so they function as pretty accurate 2-liter “volumetric flasks”–easily within 1% accuracy.) But the problem with soda bottles is that they are made of PET, which some of the solutions I make up will damage. Some, like 6 M sodium hydroxide, damage PET instantly, literally. If I pour 6 M NaOH into a PET bottle, the bottle instantly turns from clear to cloudy white, as the strong base solution starts de-polymerizing the plastic. Having a reasonably accurate 2-liter PP measuring container makes things a lot easier. I’d have bought one (or several) long ago if I’d known they existed.
11:46 – Hmmm. Coyotes may soon be hanging out in your backyard
I’m not worried about Colin. At 70 or 75 pounds (32 to 34 kilos), he’d tear even a large male coyote to pieces. And coyotes are afraid of him because his ears make him look wolf-like. And between the two of us, even a pack of coyotes is going to shy away.
Nor do I worry about black bears. They’re smart, essentially super-dogs. Any bear we see around here is much more likely to run for it than attack or stand and fight.
But if I see a mountain lion roaming around this neighborhood, I’ll shoot it. I don’t care what the law says. Mountain lions, like all cats, are stupid. They don’t have enough sense to fear people and their fire-sticks. Coyotes, being Canidae, and bears, being honorary Canidae, do.
13:07 – How smart are Border Collies? Pretty damned smart. I’ve been running up and down the stairs all day today, working in my lab making up solutions for the new batch of biology kits. Colin completely ignores my trips up and down the stairs, lying on the sofa and watching me the whole time.
Until an hour or so ago, when I headed downstairs to drive over and pick up the newspaper for some friends who are out of town. There was absolutely no difference between that and the other trips I’d made downstairs, but somehow Colin knew I was going to leave the house, so he started barking like crazy. I did nothing to indicate that I was leaving the house. I didn’t check the front door to make sure it was locked (it always is during the day), rattle my car keys, or anything else. So how did he know this trip downstairs was different? I wouldn’t have known.
Crap. I just realized how he knew. I wear my glasses when I’m working on the computer and when I drive, but not when I’m working in the lab. When I headed downstairs to leave the house, I was wearing my glasses. Geez. That’s pretty subtle for a human, let alone a dog.
PS. It’s even more subtle than I thought. I just realized that I wear my glasses when I’m going to leave the house. When I’m running up and down stairs to and from the lab, I’m wearing splash goggles. Geez.
16:06 – If my first love is organic chemistry, coordination chemistry isn’t far behind. I was just down in the lab making up two liters of biuret reagent. I started by dissolving 23.6 grams of copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate in a liter of DI water. (Well, actually, I made up 94.5 mL of 1 M copper(II) sulfate to one liter, which amounts to the same thing.) I then added 33.0 grams of potassium sodium tartrate to the copper sulfate solution with stirring. The solution immediately turned from bright blue to greenish blue and became cloudy. Oops. That was insoluble copper(II) tartrate precipitating out. No worries. I then added 7.0 grams of potassium iodide, which turned the slurry distinctly greenish, but still cloudy. That was insoluble copper(II) iodide making its appearance. What a mess. Then I dissolved 128.4 grams of sodium hydroxide in water, made it up to 600 mL, and added that solution with stirring to the pale greenish slurry. As soon as the hydroxide solution hit the copper solution, the mixture turned an intense deep blue color. When I finished stirring, the precipitate was gone and I had a clear deep blue solution. I love coordination compounds.