Little Asia - Crystallisation gambit

If you read my previous post, you know that we have been blessed with two new PhD students this year. One of them – C. doesn’t seem to have any idea about chemistry. At first we’ve thought that maybe it’s the cultural difference and the difficulty in adaptation to the new environment (or at least I thought so, some other members are much less tolerant). But then the crystallisation incident happened and no one had any doubt anymore. C. hasn’t got a clue.

Let’s start from the beginning; The first reaction C. performed was reduction of D-phylglycine to get aminoalcohol. This is a routine reaction in our group, the prep is very easy and has been performed multiple times. Our postdoc L. helped C. to set up the reaction (haven’t seen that, but I suspect that L. set up the reaction for her). Obtained product, if you’re doing it on a small scale, is a white solid, easily recrystallised from hot toluene. At this step L. had already enough (pretty sure I’ve seen steam coming from her ears) and left C. to finish on her own. You think how difficult that can be, crystallisation is something you do in primary school, with kitchen salt. You dissolve it in hot solvent, wait until it cools down and voila… But… it seems that in Malaysia crystallisation is performed in slightly different (possibly revolutionary) way.

Malaysian recrystallisation procedure.

• 1 Round Bottom Flask with your product
• 1 Beaker (larger than the RBF)
• Ice (Dry Ice if necessary)

Place your RBF upside down inside the beaker (your solid shouldn’t fall out – it’s held in there by Malaysian voodoo). Fill the beaker with ice and stare at it for an hour. If your solid is not recrystallising, try topping up the beaker with dry ice.

I’m afraid I don’t know what happens next, because at this stage our supervisor came and showed C. how to do the  recrystallisation in the usual way (read recrystallised her product for her). I’m actually really upset, ‘cause this way he deprived us a chance to learn something new.

Stay tuned for the next episode.