I thought I would write a quick post about one of the instruments I used while I was in graduate school. The instrument was a viscous liquid dispenser, and we used to dispense liquid epoxy with it. It was a wonderful instrument made by Ipscot, and could be used for all sorts of other liquids such as acrylics, polyesters, cyanoacrylate, and even a lot of silicon oils. These chemical dispensers were great and could be used for a lot of things like sealing, coating, and encapsulating. They were so easy to use and made my life in the lab so much simpler but I really couldn’t get enough of it. It made lab work very simple for me. In the next lab over, they used a water syringe on the same type of instrument, which also made their life just as easy.
I guess the reason I’m talking about these again is because life in the lab is whole lot easier when you have good instrumentation. And these Ipscot instruments were spectacular. We purchased the second one for bonding plastic together to make new reaction vessels. What’s even better now as some of the instruments are programmable, which leave so much more time for life outside the chemistry lab. It was so easy to have my day’s work done early because I had good instrumentation on my side. Even though I’ve been out of the lab for while, I still remember my Ipscot instrument fondly.
Many of you have told me you will be going to graduate school at some point in your career. The best advice I can have for you is to work smarter not harder. And any time you can buy an instrument to do the work for you, you are working smarter.
That’s all for today and as always, happy reacting.
Dr. Michael Pa
Dr. Michael Pa got a bachelors degree in chemistry from Binghamton University, a masters degree in organic chemistry from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Arizona. His research focus was on novel pain killers which were more potent than morphine but designed to have fewer side effects. There may even be a patent or two that came out of it. Prior to all of this, he was a chemist at Procter and Gamble. After all of that, he (briefly) worked as a post-doctoral assistant at Syracuse University, working on novel organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In between, he did NOT compete at the 1996 Olympics, make the Atlanta Braves opening day roster, or become the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, as he had intended. #fail During this entire time, he always loved helping students, especially if they were struggling with organic chemistry. In 2006, Dr. Pa founded AceOrganicChem.com in order to make learning organic chemistry fast and easy. 14 years and about 60,000 students later we are still helping students to learn organic chemistry one reaction at a time at https://www.aceorganicchem.com
