• Question: When you are doing experiments, what chemicals do you use?

    Asked by Vicki to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Francesca Palombo

      Francesca Palombo answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I currently use solvents for cleaning optics and materials for fixing and mounting tissue sections on microscope glass slides.

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I use all sorts! I use citric acid and sodium hydroxide along with some other acids. Most of my reactions take place in water so I should add that to my list too!

    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I use plenty of chemicals, but the basic ones are those that are constant in most of my reactions; mainly an analog for vitamin B2, my solvent, which is ethanol and alloxan (which is a subunit of the vitamin B2 molecule). As you can see I try to use natural molecules since these are more sustainable the petrol based molecules.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I use all sorts; my most recent experiments used a really stinky compound called beta-mercapto-ethanol. It’s like ethanol, but you replace a hydrogen on the second carbon (the ‘beta’ carbon) with a sulfur-hydrogen:
      HS-CH2-CH2-OH
      It *stinksMATOMO_URL Seriously. One microlitre can cause an evacuation of an entire building – and it smells just like the additive put into your mains gas (there so you can smell a gas leak).

      We were using it to test some Raman spectroscopy sensing experiments – the thiol group (-SH) binds to gold nanoparticles, and we can then use this as a sensor.

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