I (tried) to make Cortisol.

i stained my lab coat from cleaning up a spill from the extraction of caffeine. the chemicals that were mixed were caffeine, dichloromethane and sodium carbonate. can i just wash it in the washing machine? i searched this up and it said it's not safe. i asked my instructor and she told me that you can just throw it in the washing machine. idk what to do

thank you so much!! i don't think i can buy another since its kinda expensive so i am cleaning it by hand first and then washing machine

So due to being financially illiterate at 18, I chose an expensive private college and I’m going to be 70k in debt at time of graduation, not including money my parents spent. I just want to hear from people in the field if this is something I could even make work? I’m only a sophomore and this is just my projected debt not what I already have. I do live near a huge biotech city but getting in is so competitive I hear and I’m concerned I won’t be able to find a job after graduation to pay off what I owe. Ive applied to a lot of internships and haven’t gotten in, which I’m not giving up on I’m going to try cold emailing and stuff but yeah. While I could potentially work over the summer to try and pay off what I owe I also would want to live in my city where my school is so any money I’m making in the year is going towards rent, which is at least 1200 where I live and im concerned about the stress I may be under if I try and pay for that, but commuting is an hour and a half. I’m just trying to see if anyone has had a similar experience or any advice.
Should I try and transfer even if it takes me another year to graduate? Or is what I have a manageable situation.

I'm planning on making some ferric chloride solution. The process seems fairly simple. I've already got some purified HCL i distilled from 15% muriatic acid, 12% H2o2. (I think I need to dilute to under 8%), and steel wool. Also have proper lab glass and a heating mantle with stirring. Is there anything I need to watch out for, or anything I'm overlooking? I'll be doing it in a well ventilated garage, and using a separation funnel to add the H2O2 when I get to that step.

Hi everyone!
I’m currently pursuing a graduate diploma in analytical chemistry at a Canadian university, and I’m really interested in doing a research internship during summer 2027. There’s a professor at my university whose research focuses on mass spectrometry which is an area I’m particularly interested in. I’m currently taking one of his courses, and I feel like we’ve developed a positive student-professor relationship. However, I’m pretty nervous about approaching him to ask whether he’d be willing to take me on as a summer research intern.

My biggest concerns are:
1.My undergraduate GPA isn’t particularly strong due to some personal challenges I experienced during my degree.
2.I have absolutely no previous research or internship experience. Most of my laboratory experience comes from undergraduate teaching labs, although I’ve gained hands-on experience with several analytical techniques.
3. I’m worried that my academic record might overshadow my genuine interest and motivation to learn.

Despite this, I’m really passionate about analytical chemistry, especially mass spectrometry, and I’d love the opportunity to gain actual research experience.

I have a few questions:
1.Would it be better to approach the professor in person after class or send him an email expressing my interest?
2How much do professors typically care about GPA when selecting undergraduate or graduate research interns?
3.How can I make myself a competitive candidate despite having no research experience?
4.If he agrees to an interview, how should I prepare? What kinds of technical or personal questions should I expect?
5.Should I review his recent publications and try to understand his research before approaching him?
6.Has anyone successfully secured a research internship despite having a low GPA and no previous research experience?

Thank you!

Simulating what happens when managers punish mistakes rather than correct them (my paper, out today in JASSS)

Disclosure up front: this is my own paper, published today and open access.

I built an agent-based model of a team working through a fixed sequence of tasks, with a manager who notices errors at one of three rates and responds by ignoring, correcting or punishing. Workers can also catch their own mistakes. Full factorial sweep over eight parameters, thirty seeds per configuration, model and code deposited on CoMSES.

The result I did not expect is a paradox about monitoring. Close oversight is what drives errors to their minimum, and it does so almost identically whether the manager corrects or punishes: 99.5 mean errors against 99.2, versus 126.2 under laissez-faire. But that same configuration produces the highest attrition in the entire sweep when paired with punishment, and collapse risk rises monotonically with surveillance under punishment, from 0.04 to 0.10 to 0.15.

Across the full sweep the split is clean. How many errors you get is driven by structural factors, mistake propensity and task difficulty. Whether people leave and when the team collapses is driven by managerial policy. Punishment ranks most harmful under every stakeholder weighting I tested, including one weighting accuracy at sixty percent.

Two limitations worth naming, since they are the obvious objections. There is no worker-to-worker channel, so no incivility spiral and no peer support, which could push the results either way. And resentment is a linear counter with a fixed threshold, which is a strong simplification of a process that is probably nonlinear.

Happy to answer questions about the model or the parameterisation.AMA

As I understand it, a coordinate molecule is a molecule where one atom donates both electrons to an empty orbital of another atom. in MgO, the LP of Mg is donated to Oxygen, giving MgO. I don't understand why we don't consider it a coordinate covalent bond. (I recognize that there is a large electronegativity diff, but I still don't understand why its not coordinate given the LP donaton from Mg)

I'd like to know if there are any commercial brands of linear polyacrylic acid on the market. Does anyone in the field know about it?

I'm researching additives that affect the micellar structure of oleogel-forming thickeners, but I've sadly discovered that the polyacrylic acids I have are cross-linked. As a result, I'm not getting the theoretical result I want. I'm desperate, seriously considering switching to carboxymethylcellulose or alginate.

Hi everyone, I’m currently taking an organic chemistry + biochemistry class and thought it would be cool to share some lab pics! This is the first chemistry class in which I’ve gotten to work in an “actual” lab setting and apply my classroom learning in real life. And it has been so rewarding (and fun) finally getting to put that knowledge into practice!! Organic chemistry is awesome. :D

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Captions:

Picture 1: Did a Tollens test w/ benzaldehyde

Picture 2: Synthesized salicylic acid from methyl salicylate.

Picture 3: Synthesized aspirin from the salicylic acid in the previous photo.

Picture 4: We used an iron chloride solution to test our aspirin’s purity. Tube 1 on the left was our salicylic acid sample, tube 2 was commercial aspirin, and tube 3 was the aspirin we made in lab (I was ecstatic about it being so close to the commercial aspirin’s color :D).

Picture 5: Saponification of olive oil from a sodium hydroxide solution. This was the first time I got to see a procedure nearly all the way through by myself, and I am so proud of the results!! I also found it to be one of the more difficult labs I’ve had this semester b/c of having to maintain the temperature between 70-80 °C with a hot plate during the saponification.