Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Colour of Organic Chemistry

As a synthetic organic chemist what I would like at the end of the day are some white or colourless crystals. However, off-white, tan or yellow amorphous solid is more or less what you expect to end up with. But when I get bright pink, purple and green stuff I really don't know what to make of it. D!

11 comments:

OrganicOverdose said...

I think I found a similar colour on my column a few times when running a Barton decarboxylation. I think the pyrithione had a high level of conjugation or something and it went a nice purple/green like that. It is always refreshing to see a different colour other than white/yellow.

Ψ*Ψ said...

See, pink and purple are closer to what I expect! Green, on the other hand...green is often the color of fail in organic materials.

ChemGrad said...

Does it smells nice?

I've made a pink compound (I've done the synthesis before and resulted white crystals at one time and brown crystals at another) with sweet watermelon-like smell

:D

Unknown said...

I think pTsOH has given me that color before (as well as nice needle-shape crystals)

BabeToluene said...

I'm working on a synthesis now in which the first four steps take me from brown to bright yellow to grandma pink and finally to colorless oil. The first time I got through step four I was a little freaked out...

SiO2lungs said...

... at the end of the day I always expect colorless oils :)

Anonymous said...

We have a rule in our lab that if you get something that falls out of the white/yellow/brown/black realm of colours, then you get a punch in the arm by any of your labmates 'cos organic chemistry shouldn't be coloured!

Med Chem said...

may be column will remove those color side products. While working with pyridine compounds, I too get similar colored compounds (Yellow, red, green).
Looks beautiful but have to make it white in most cases, hehe!

milkshake said...

this looks like something that one can get for not watching out on a date

Aditya Bhattacharyya said...

I have prepared vinyl aziridines which show beautiful pink colour. N-Nosyl aziridines also show yellow colour.

Anonymous said...

Made two similar reactions that gave one a light blue colour and the other a light green colour, first things come to mind is degradation!!!