Question: how are yuo doing with the experiment? is it difficult?

Sarah Thomas answered on 24 Mar 2011:

The experiments are going really well thanks. Sometimes the work is pretty tricky!! Here is a description of how I made the spin label 2,2,5,5-tetramethylpyrrolinoxyl which I will call “TMPO” for short, ok?

So the first thing I did was get a flask and I put TMPO in it with some acid. It was really hard to get it to
dissolve so I put the flask in a Sonic Bath. A Sonic Bath is like a water bath, but the water vibrates really hard and the bath makes this really load screeching sound like “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”!!

Then I took my flask out and I put it in a nice quiet cosy water bath and I added a catalyst and an activating agent. The activating agent makes the TMPO really reactive!

So then I added Hydrazine. Hydrazine is really dangerous so I have to be REALLY careful. I added a few drops of Hydrazine into my flask with a pipette and then I have to throw the pipette and my gloves into a bleach bath to destroy any trace of the Hydrazine. When I put the pipette into the bleach, it foams and fizzes and that’s the Hydrazine being destroyed.

The last thing I do is freeze-dry the flask. They freeze dry food for astronauts and coffee is also freeze dried. Basically it’s a way of removing all the water from something. But you do it by freezing the flask in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees then you attach it onto a vacuum and it sucks all the water off as it slowly melts!

Then all that is left in my flask is TMPO-hydrazide bonded together!!

And it took me one day to do all that work!