New Growth on Prickly Pear Cacti

Here's some new growth which will eventually be a new pad on one of my Opuntia humifusa cacti.

NYC Quiz Bowl Trip

William Floyd (us) went against St. Anthonys Catholic School (private , LOL), and we won :D

Also, randomly, I never posted one of my all time favorite self made macro shots, yes I grew it myself.

Smith Point Waves

Here are some pics taken with my Canon PowerShot A500. Trying to improve my photography skills. Photos were edited in the FOSS GIMP :) (All pics are greatly scaled down).

Lightning Pic!

I've been trying for a while to get a lightning bolt picture. Finally tonight around 1:40am I did. Although it's not a great quality pic, I was behind a metal window screen - there are two bolts in the pic. It was taken with a Canon Powershot A550, exp 13sec, ISO 100, f/2.6. I'm incredibly happy for this not too pretty shot!! Click on the pic to see full size.

Flower & Trichome Pics of Rosa multiflora

Rosa multiflora Title says it all. Trichome pics are of the flowers calyx under a microscope, as shown the trichomes have a nice red color.

Leaf Pigments

Wanted to see the major leaf pigments today, so I went at it. It was a simple crushed leaf (C. chinense) extraction into acetone and filtered. The tube on the right shows what this yeiled, a bright green solution, consisting primarily of chlorophyll's a and b, in a much higher concentration than other pigments such as xanthophylls and carotenoids. As we know, when leaves change color in fall, this is because the chlorophylls break down, they're very fragile molecules, leaving the other pigments behind. When you add HCl (in this case, 2 mL 10M) into a solution of acetone with pigments, the extreme acidity destroys the majority of chlorophyll molecules. This leaves you with a yellow/orangy/brown colored solution. This consists mainly now of carotenoids and xanthophyll pigments (pictured in the left test tube).

Lemon Drop (C. baccatum) L.S. Micrograph

Took a micrograph of a piece of L.S. (Logitudinal section, cut straight up/down the stem in halve), and labled it with it's parts...this is what happens when I'm bored.

First Chili flower of the season!

Woohoo, first flower of the season, on Royal Embers (C. annuum). Here s/he is:

Garden Stuff

I just realized I've never posted about the botany stuff I do. So here's some pics and information. The chilis (most of the plants on the indoor photo) are of the following:
C. annuum: Red Bell, Green Bell, Orange Bell, Jalapeno, Royal Embers, Pequin, Cherry Bomb, C. chinense: Aribibi Gusano, Orange Habanero, C. baccatum: Lemon Drop, Aji Amarillo, C. pubescens: Manzano rocotos. There are also two types of cacti, a lemon drop and habanero bonsai I'm working on, Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and sundews are being germinated. The outdoor/sunroom pic is of many plants. That includes Hibiscus syriacus cuttings, habanero plant, Oak bonsai/pine graft, lemon drop cuttings, and an oak bonsai forest that is still germinating in the long tray. The micropic is of an Eastern White Pine needle's stoma, just took that and thought it looked interesting. The macro of the conifer seedlings are Colorado Blue Spruce, around 1 month old.

Political Compass

Just felt like I needed to show my polit. state, updated Aug 8 2008:

Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.18

Specialized Trichome Structures in C. baccatum 'Lemon Drop'?

This evening, I was examining a chili leaf from one of my plants under my microscope. This time, it was geared at viewing the trichomes of Capsicum baccatum 'lemon drop'. Past knowledge says that capsaicin (chemical that produces 'the burn') and other capsaicinoid production in Capsicums is related to stress, this is undisputed. But now, I hypothesize an additional way it may determine stress levels, due to the special trichomes it posesses, compared to other plants.

Pictured (left)is a few trichomes of a leaf from 'Lemon Drop', odd to me becuause their structure (I wonder if I'm the first one to 'discover' these). Usually, trics. are straight or similar not varying in width of the cells in a trich. This, I'm referring to how the top and bottom of the trichome is large, while the middle is extremely thin. My hypothesis is, there's a reason for this odd structure. I believe this can lead to the end being broken off easily,if the end cell of a trichome is ruptered/broken_off, it will cause the plant to produce more cap. This may be revolutonary for a few reasons, 1) an oddly shaped trichome , 2) possible reason for trichomes 3) possibilities to make a chili plant produce cap. from trichome related stress.

The structure of these trichomes that are very interesting is the fact that some have a very thin part in the middle. This suggests a purpose, possibly to be broken off easier, such as by an insect. This may in turn signal the plant to produce more capsaicinoids. Therefore, trichomes my be related to stress of the plant.

It may be a benifit to study this further, I'd also like to see the composition of these trichomes and how it would compare to a normal leaf cell, and compared to other plants respectivly.

~EDIT~
I just rubbed my finger across edge of leaf, and then looked at it under microscope to see just if my idea about the structure being special was correct. As I thought, the end of a trich broke off, it is pictured to the right. (Look at the one second from left in the picture on the right, and see how a similar one was prior to breaking, pictured left)

~EDIT #2~
I just decided to look at more leaves of the lemon drop under the 'scope. As I forgot to mention before, the original leaf picture is from a pressed older leaf from my lemon drop plant. To draw out any misconceptions that the odd trichs were from pressures, I did the following. I examined a fresh older leaf ( close to bottom of plant) under the microscope, it did indeed have the odd trichomes. Then, I examined a newer leaf ( few days old), it did not have the special trichs. Then I examined a young habaneroes leaves (C. chinense), no special trichs. Apparently these special trichs may be endemic to the Lemon Drop (or C. baccatum species), present only in older leaves. (I'd have to wait for other chili species to grow older to test this) This poses a new question, why age? I hypothesize maybe the older (closer to ground) trichomes are more exposed to insects and such, therefore it's a way to detect stresses of the plant easier (as a broken trichome would be easier for a plant to repair than a broken stem caused by insects).

~Edit #3~
Ok, it seems to be that this "new trichome" is actully just fractured normal ones. But this still presents us with another question. This being, do Capsicums use chemical messengers (such as auxins) to send a stress signal leading to increased capsaicinoid production?

Flower Egg

After mom received a flower from someone, and decided to throw it out, I took scientific advantage of it. The pics are of the ovules, inside the ovary of a flower.

Tradescantia zebrina Microscope Pics

Here are a few pictures under taken through one of the occular lenses of my microscope. Recently bought a 40x objective, total power of 500x. Top left picture is total of 50x, bottom left is at 125x, both on the right at 500x total. The two pictures on the right show trichomes that can be seen in both pictures on the left.

Just some Plant photos I've taken recently...

Title says it all. Just took some pictures and tried to name them as best as I could, with some forum help of course. From left to right, top to bottom: Japanese maple (some kinda Acer palatium), a type of pine, Artemisia vulgaris, Acalypha rhomboidea, Potentilla simplex , Euonymus fortunei, some type of Berberis. The Acalypha and Artemisia pictures are of low quality, others you can click for high quality clear photos taken by me! Licensed under GPL of course! (Go open source)

Playing with the Microscope again....

Just playing around, attempting a simple soap DNA extraction. Then I just took a look at some solvent with the saline cheeck cells. Found some nice little blue bacteria (maybe bacteria,not sure). Every whole # on picture = .2mm

Microscope Pictures

Today I decided to see if I could take a picture, with a normal digital camera, put it "into" the eyepiece of my microscope, and snap one. I was able to, although not very clear. First pic. is of some salt crystals, second is of a gum wrapper that has mini bumps in the foil. In real life, they look pretty awesome under the microscope with the two occular lenses. (Click pictures to enlarge for real size.)

Capsaicinoid Extraction

Today I received a few possible Da Nang MKT chilis from a friend. After having fun eating them ,I decided an extraction would be fun. So, just that I did. Crushed two chilis in about 30mL boiling acetone. then filtered out the solids. Now I reduced the 30mL to about 2mL, added 5mL H2O. Then it was boiled until evaporated and capsaicinoid oil remained. Picture is of a 25mL Beaker holding the oil blots.
After I took the beaker off the burner (contents still evaporating somehwat), I stupidly took a slight whiff of it, and as I've been warned, felt my nose and throat immediatly go like it was on fire. :) After cooling, I sampled about the size that would scrape off onto a pin needle, swathered it around in mouth, and after about 10sec. of slight burning, it HIT, very very hot :)
Success!

I later learned how acetone extraction of capsaicinoids usually only takes out around 13% of the availiable compounds. Therefore, it would best to do this multiple times in order for a full extraction (AKA Getting the most for your money!)

Next time, I'd like to use a chili with much higher capsaicinoid content. Possibily one with >200,000 scoville unit rating. As these are probably anywhere from 75K-100K. Habaneros would be a better choice, 100K-300K, as I will be growing them this coming outdoor season.

Tetraamminecopper(II)

Long time since last post. Decided to do some chem. stuff today. Accidentally mixed some Ammonia soln with CuSO4(aq). I'd think it would be a straight forward inorganic rxn, of what the products were. CuSO4(aq)+ NH4^+ OH- => ??!? This is what happens, you get a very dark royal blue solution, with a lighter blue precip, I have not dryed the precip, so it may be white, or pale blue. There's my picture to the left.(Click to enlarge)


Edit: I've just found out "Here, ammonia (NH3) is added to copper(II) sulfate (CuSO4). The result is a pale blue precipitate, which is Cu(OH)2(s). The dark blue color is due to Cu(NH3)4 2+ ." Now I know what I have, thanks to: this website Therefore, the solution is full of the tetraamminecopper(II) cation, [Cu(NH3)4]2+.

Ibuprofen+Salicylic acid?

Last night an odd idea dawned upon me, would it be possible to combine two common molecules together to form something very different? After attempting to find information, I found out it would be possible by reflux in conc. KOH. I don't have KOH, but I do have HCl. Therefore I decided to reflux about a gram of each substance in about 50mL of 5M HCl. I don't have a reflux condenser, so this is what I did (Click to maximize):




After refluxing with my awesome ghetto reflux condenser (aka cold water in beaker) for about 20minutes, I decided it was time to let it cool and crsytallize. Here are the crystals after only 10min of cooling:



After I filtered the crystals, I noticed part was actual crystals, the rest was odd clumps, which were ibuprofen, later I realized this was becuase ibuprofen doesn't dissolve in HCl, as salicylic acid does. So, I learned a lot, also put my crystal image on wikipedia recrystallization page.

Wikipedia edit from todays findings

Well, today's lab brought me some interesting information, and a crystal
picture. Which I decided to upload to Wikipedias Salicylic acid page. I
made this section here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylic_acid#Hydrolization_from_ASA

:D

Hydrolysis of Acetylsalicylic Acid

Well, today I crushed about 15 Asprin tablets, and boiled them in HCl(aq). I've done this before, but not with normal lab equipment. I finally found what actually happens: http://www.crscientific.com/article-aspirin.html

Here is a picture of some SA crystals:




(Click to enlarge so you can see the crystals)
The large batch of salicylic acid is drying, very happy to finally know what's happening in this lab. :D
Tomarrow I'll do a MP test to make sure it's salicylic (99% is, crystals look like it, the acetylsalicylic crystals look boxlike, compared to needle-like salicylic acid)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this..maybe make acne stuff! :D

2nd MP Lab - Acetone cleaning

Sunday I re-did the melting point of ibuprofen. This time I calculated
it's melting point to be 71*C. Apparently this isn't completely pure ibuprofen,
didn't expect it to be.

Today I also cleaned some of my dirty classware containing insoluble-in-
water compounds, worked great. Amazing how high its vapour pressure is (was fun watching it evap. off my hand in seconds)!

Melting Point- Lab

Finally received my hot plate :D. I decied to put it to use in a melting
point lab. I used acetylsalicylic acid and ibuprofen, each in their own
capillary tube in a vegetable oil bath to determine melting point. Here
were the results and findings:

Acetylsalicylic Acid avg= 131*F

Ibuprofen avg= 71*C

Avg is the average temperature at which the substance started to melt and
completely finished melting.

The acetylsalicylic acid deviates by 5*C from the stated MP. I attribute
this to other substances in the tablet (since this was crushed from
asprin), and even greater possibility, was that it expired in 2003. The
smell of acetic acid was very apparent when the asprin bottle was opened,
usually a sign of decomposition. The percent error was 3.6%

The Ibuprofen was 4*C off of it's average MP (which MSDS varied anywhere
from 72-78) of 75*C. The deviation could be a cause also by substances
already in the tablet, such as micro-crystalline celluose.

I plan to do the Ibuprofens melting point again in the future to see if I
could get better results.

Which is more Endothermic-Lab

As previously described, I planned to find out whether H2O or HCl with
MgSO4 Hydrate would be more endothermic. I put 80mL of 5M HCl into one
flask, 80mL H2O in another. Then in each flask I dissolved (well, as best
as possible) a Dixie's cup worth (scale isn't working) of MgSO4 hydrate.
Swirled until best dissolved. The HCl flask didn't dissolve it all, the
H2O flask seemed to dissolve most if not all. Here are the results table:

HCl 80mL | H2O 80mL

Start Temp 26.7*C | 26.1*C

End Temp 13.0*C | 18.3*C

Difference 13.7*C | 7.8*C

Apparently, the MgSO4 hydrate dissolved in HCl acid was almost doubly
endothermic. A future post will describe why the HCl was more endothermic
than the water.

Tomarrow's Little Lab

Well, I got my glassware today! Good stuff.

So,the lab tomarrow is to see weather HCl+MgSO4*hydrate or
H2O+MgSO4*hydrate is more endothermic. I was playing around with it today,
noticed it was around -2*C when you add MgSO4 hydrate to H2O. So I'll set
it up accuratly tomarrow and record the results here. :D

Summer Chem

So, it's been a few weeks already into summer vacation. I should be
purchasing a hot plate, thermometer, and glassware very soon. Today I read
about some esters, and deciding what I could possibly make as my 2nd
organic 'lab'. Another cool thing I learned was about superacids, amazing
how they can go to -25pH. I also helped a guy named teff_ in ##chemistry
about oxylic acid and some organic things, in which I learned a bit more
about organics.

Last Day..

Today's already the last day of my 10th grade year. Time definitly feels
to go faster as you get older, but I understand that's becuase you have
much more to do in a shorter period of time. It was interesting waking up
this morning, knowing that this is the last time until 11th grade that
I'll be waking up at that time, taking a shower at that time, so on.

First Organic On-Purpose Reaction! :D

So, today I completed my first oragnic reaction, on purpose of course. I
took my acetylsalicylic acid, boiled it with HCl for about 3 minutes. It's
still drying, but some of it dried into definitly something different from
what I started with. That of course, being salicylic acid :D The product
is white, fluffy, crystalline looking compared to the starting reactant
(similar to pure caffeine powder). YAY ME!

Enjoying Z80..

I definitly seem to be enjoying Z80 assembly over x86, it seems to make
more sense. But, maybe since I now have a grasp on assembly, x86 would be
easier. Anywho, I've been writing some text-displaying programs, simple
things, just toying around with that. Kuzew had an idea of making a TiT
(Ti Terminal), a complete assembly operating system for the TI83+

TI Calcs + TI83+ ASM on Linux

So, I have an interest in those Z80 calcs, popular with many students
today. Of course somethings can be a chore to get working on Linux, here
I'll explain how to get the TI calculators working under Ubuntu (This will not work on Debian due to udev differences) through TiLP.

1. In a terminal: sudo apt-get install tidev-modules-source
2. In a terminal: sudo mknod /dev/tiusb0 c 115 16
3. In a terminal: sudo chmod 666 /dev/tiusb0

That's only the steps needed to get a TI calc connected to your Linux
(Debian based) system. TiLP needs to be run as root in order for it to be
able to connect through USB. This arises another problem, not being able
to use the home directory (in the TiLP menu, it won't let you move back a
dir, only up) (Since root defaults to /root/). This can easily be fixed
via editing the root account in "/etc/passwd", changing to something like
/home/bob/.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TI 83+ Assembly on your Linux Box!

The TI83, TI83+, TI84.., and a couple more, run on the Z80 processor. It's
pretty simple to get asm started for this on a linux system, firstoff, you
need the correct include file. This can be found:

http://r0n.kuzew.net:81/ti83plus.inc

Second, you'll need the assembler,
which can be found here: http://www.ticalc.org/pub/dos/asm/tasm32.zip
After you have extracted tasm32, put the ti83plus.inc file into that
folder. You also need to put bin2var into your tasm32 folder:

http://r0n.kuzew.net:81/bin2var You also need wine installed for this to
work. In order to compile your assembly program:

cd folder/that/has/TASM
wine TASM.exe -80 -b -i input.asm output.bin
./bin2var output.bin output.8xp

From there, you'll be able to transfer output.8xp to your TI83+ via tilp.
NOTE: using B_call or b_call in your code to call a ROM call will not
work, you need to use bcall instead.

NOTE: This calc to copmuter connection explained above only works on an ubuntu system.

Speaking of Global Warming..

I guess Global Warming is happening :P

Anywho, this is a pretty cool article about a New process that generates
hydrogen from aluminum alloy to run engines and fuel cells. Hydrogen is
always better then burning Hydrocarbons, all your get is water and CO2.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/newprocess.htm

The Heat...

Well, simply put, it's hot. KHWV says it's 85*F, my temp. sensor in the
house says it's 79.1*F in here! Global Warming!? Now that's a government
conspiracy...

Butane Hydrate (Results)

Well..It was a failure. At least it gave me something to do while I was
bored.

Homemade Butane Hydrate?

After thinking, I knew I couldn't get a good enough source of the Methane
for Methane Hydrate, I knew I did have Butane. So, why not attempt butane
hydrate? I put a .5L plastic bottle, with about 60mL of H2O in, and filled
the bottle with CH3CH2CH2CH3, put into a freezer (Around -5*C). Every 15
minutes I'd shake the whole thing, possibly to encorporate some butane
into the ice crystals that started forming. During the first hour, I
noticed the whole bottle had an internal vacuum of pressure, the bottle
was condensing. I concluded that was either from 1) Butane being absorbed
into water, 2) The cold making the butane gas have a smaller volume 3)
both. Patrick' in ##chemistry suggested it was 2, I agree. Although I'm
not sure. Because about after an hour of total experiment, I refilled the
bottle with more butane, and the bottle has not shrunk like it did the
first time. Does that mean the water absorbed the butane it could? Or did
I misfill the bottle? Right now I'm going to freeze the water solid, then
take the ice out, and see if it burns! :D

Laboratory Synthesis of Pure Methane Hydrate

Well, apparently I now know it takes more then some gas and a freezer in
order to produce a gas hydrate, explained here:

2.1 Pure methane hydrate.
Samples of polycrystalline methane hydrate can be efficiently synthesized
by
promoting the general reaction CH4. This product is achieved by the mixing
and subsequent slow, regulated
heating of sieved, granular, H2O "seed" ice and cold, pressurized CH4gas
in an approximately constant-volume reaction vessel.

From:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:RqivwBqEqV8J:web.mit.edu/wbdurham/www/papers/68-Stern-et-al-2000.pdf+laboratory+preparation+%22methane+hydrate%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=opera

Bloggin By Email

Hmm, Blogging by email is pretty nifty!