Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Physical Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: gregpawin on March 10, 2004, 10:04:20 AM
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In case anyone was wondering, now is a good time to ask questions.
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I think my favorite part of P-Chem was when we were discussing Quantum Mechanics and proved that there is a finite possibility that I could run full speed right into a wall and actually go right through it. Of course, the probability is so small that there are no words to describe it, but it's not zero. ;D
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Yeah, that part's pretty cool. That actually deals with what I'm doing in my research: STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy). So, we actually tunnel through vacuum or sometimes air to view the sub-atomic structures of a surface.
For more information, just reply
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Sounds pretty interesting. I'm trying to decide whether or not I should upload my Mass Spectra for a positive cocaine determination I found while interning at a drug-testing laboratory my senior year of college. There is no identification about who the specimen came from, but I'm still unsure of the legality. I think I can post it since it's just a clear-as-day positive Mass Spectrograph of benzoylecgonine.
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That would be totally cool... it would be nice to get a collection of psychotropic drug spectra.
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I'll go through my .pdf files and make sure that there are no identifiable marks on it. I'll try and get some up as they are incredibly neat and clear as day. If this isn't a positive result, then nothing is. ;D
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After looking through the files, I'll have to do some clean-up work on the quality and remove some things like the file names, the computer names, the operator names, and anything else that could possibly link this test to a real person. So once I edit the files and remove that stuff, I'll upload it here so that people can see what steps are taken in a GC/MS analysis of a suspected positive cocaine sample.
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Cool... so did you work in a forensics lab or something?
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I found while interning at a drug-testing laboratory my senior year of college.
::)
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Hmm... cocaine in a drug testing facility.... are you sure its not a forensics lab or are you guys making fun stuff on the side... unless cocaine is coming over the counter tomorrow hehe.
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huh?
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Hmm... cocaine in a drug testing facility.... are you sure its not a forensics lab or are you guys making fun stuff on the side... unless cocaine is coming over the counter tomorrow hehe.
Heh. I worked for a state run equine toxicology lab my senior year. The lab performed drug tests on race horses, as well as drug screenings on the jockeys and employees of the state. So on a typical day I would be doing a Drugs Of Abuse screen on multiple human urine samples, and if a positive were found in the screening I would also go on to perform the confirmation testing on the GC/MS setup. ;D
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Umm... so were the horses or the jockeys on coke?... just making sure.
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Umm... so were the horses or the jockeys on coke?... just making sure.
lol. We tested both the horses and the jockeys/employees for drugs of abuse. A horse in a state sponsored race must be 100% clear of all drugs in order to be considered valid. You'd be amazed at what some owners will feed their horses in an attempt to cheat and win. The jockeys and employees at the race tracks are drug tested per state regulations. During my internship, I did not once come across a positive drug screening on horse urine samples. I did, however, come across a few different positive screenings on human urine samples, though only one of them really stood out as positive.
That positive sample is the one I have all the Gas Chromatographs and Mass Spectra for. It was so blatently clear that even a non-chemist could understand it as a positive. The procedure that's used for drug testing is that first a pretty non-specific testing is done of the urine via an Immunoassay technique. (We used an Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbant Assay, or ELISA, screening). If a positive result is found in the preliminary screenings, it must be confirmed by a more specific, "fingerprint like" machine in order to be considered a legal positive by most sophisticated courts. So in our screening, we found that this particular urine specimen was positive for benzoylecgonine, the metabolite for cocaine. Upon getting the screening results, we then ran it through the GC/MS along with a negative control, positive control, blank, and a known sample of pure benzoylecgonine. By comparing the graphs and spectra from all those runs, we could easily see the positive result. I should have the graphs and spectra up sometime this weekend.
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I think my favorite part of P-Chem was when we were discussing Quantum Mechanics and proved that there is a finite possibility that I could run full speed right into a wall and actually go right through it. Of course, the probability is so small that there are no words to describe it, but it's not zero. ;D
My Physics teacher told us the exact same thing, and it was very suprising. The thing I liked the most was parabolic motion because I did a calculation on a rail gun. I asked my teacher if they were correct because it seemed highly unlikely it could be right. It turned out they were, so according to the calculations the railgun could be fired around 1000 km in, I think, 9 min.
I'll try and find the exact calculations I performed.
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I apologise if this is not your area but can you please tell me if it is possible to break chemical bonds via movement eg when you splash water you break hyrogen bonds.If so would it be possible to accelerate stable ions at a molecule with relatively weak bonds and break it up into is elements?
eg carbon monoxide to carbon oxygen.note:I couldn't get the attachments working because my computer was playing tricks on me!
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shaking something, even very vigourously, won't break covalent bonds. especially in water.
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do you know where argon is found?
i am doing this for my eighth grade science project >:( >:(
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shaking something, even very vigourously, won't break covalent bonds. especially in water.
I beg to differ Mitch. Go ahead and shake a bottle of Nitroglycerine. You'll break a LOT of covalent bonds. ;) ;D
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I stand corrected. But this is not the case for water. :P
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Some of it depends on how hard you shake the water. By hand, no. Shaking it with a shockwave the travels at 9000m/s, well, now you've got a different story. So, yes, you can break bonds by motion, but depending on the substance, it might require a lot or a little motion.
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I remember reading an article where they used a mechanical chamber that shook steel bearings in a solution instead of using chemical catalysts.