AbeMichelson

1) Time management. Find out what you do best at what time. It's like the morning/evening person. Different tasks are done best by people at different times of the day. Find out what you are good at when first, then tailor your schedule around it. If you try to stick to an unnatural schedule, it will not last. 2) The best way to learn something is by teaching. Find study partners that know less than you do. It seems counter intuitive, but it works. You have to have a deeper understanding to teach something. 3) DON'T PAY MONEY TO EDITORS! There are usually writing centers on campuses. Also, many professors love to help. It shows you care about the class. 4) Review your tests at office hours. Save up questions for office hours. 4) Study a little every day. Cramming rarely works and creates more stress on test day. I once had a student email me about having an extra study session at 10:30 pm ON THE NIGHT BEFORE AN EXAM. I told him flat out it was too late for that and he needed to start earlier next test. Good luck!

If you are going into science (and since you are here, I assume you are) here are some things that time management helps: 1) Knowing when you work best at what. I tend to well with trivial tasks in the morning, meaningful tasks in mid-day (e.g. research), and creative/planning in the afternoon. I tend to plan my next day at the end, doing those tasks that I hate in the morning and the ones I enjoy the rest of the day. Everyone has their own internal schedule. I would advise against arbitrarily setting a schedule. Spend a few weeks finding out what you are good at when. Maybe you should be getting up early to do homework instead of working at night (won't your parents love that). 2) Research is not all about being in the lab! Especially not in this day and age: a) Experiment planning. You will need to spend some time planning out your experiments. First literature searches ("A day in the library is worth a week in the lab."). This, too, requires some time management. If you love a subject, you can actually spend more time than necessary here. Careful planning of experiments is important. You should have a target date and steps along the way. After you have a plan, then you can schedule approximate time schedules for experiments. E.G. After I deposit my gold contacts (0.5 days), I can test the conductivity (0.5 days). b) Down-time tasks. A decent amount of science is 'waiting.' While a watched pot does boil, you haven't made it go faster watching it. If something takes an hour to run, then you should schedule a task that takes about an hour. Read literature, get lunch, etc. Another source of downtime is that fact that sometimes things break, orders are postponed, or some other reason you can't be in the lab. You can sit around and mope or you can think about what you want to do in the future, do tasks you have postponed, or write a paper. c) Deadlines! When is the grant due? How long will it take me to write this? OR When will the project funding ending? Experiment planning is a small part of this. 3) Experiment Planning - said it 3 times for a reason. This is the reason that people with experience are valuable. They know what can go wrong and can plan for it. They know the most elegant way to run an experiment (correlating to lowest cost and highest probability of a good outcome). Learn this and you will be valuable in any economy.

Sulfuric Acid + Copper -> Copper Sulfate! If Sulfur Dioxide is around any water it will form sulfuric acid. I would go with stainless steel. It is your safest bet.

It will depend on the central atom. AX(7-n)En would be the configuration. It would have to be a relatively heavy atom, but can be found with Cr (transition metal), Iodine, and Xenon to give a few examples.

Was it reddish-brown? Bleach in water forms the following equilibrium: Cl2 + H2O H+ + Cl− + HClO And since, Pt + 2Cl2--> PtCl4 that could very well be the cause. You can buff it off. Rings are definitely bad to have around chemicals and machinery!

The answer is yes, if you have a good enough spectrometer. Hydrogen bonding changes the bond length of the -O-H bond, thus changes the energy required to vibrate the bond (stretch). The shifts are usually <20cm-1, so the spectrometer needs to have good resolution (Raman spectral resolution is typically poorer than IR). Another roadblock is that the OH stretching mode is very weak in Raman (that's why you can do Raman in aqueous solutions!). Sensitivity/Laser power will be an important factor. Personally, I'd go IR over Raman for this kind of information.

To answer the Copper ion question directly and using Chemistry(!): The copper ions form a loose bond with four surrounding water molecules, forming [Cu(H2O)4]2+. This has an octahedral (think 8 sided die) shape. This causes the electronic structure of the copper complex to have a gap between unoccupied and occupied electronic states that is the same energy as blue light! This explaination can be found in Inorganic Chemistry Textbooks. For a really neat experiment that accents the solvent (water) effect on electronic configuration, put cobalt ions (cobalt chloride will work fine) into 3 different solutions: water, acetone, and ethanol. Note the color change. This can be explained by the spectrochemical series in ligand field theory. I always give physicist a hard time because they say everything can be explained by physics, but often can't make the leap from Physics to Chemistry themselves personally. This is all based on electric fields changing the energy level/configuration around an atom. I used to joke when I taught that almost all of chemistry can be explained through Coulumb's Law. (everything else is Thermodynamics). Sorry, may have assumed some things: 1. Occupied states= where the electrons are (at least a high probability of being), unoccupied = where they are allowed to be, if given enough energy. 2. To go from one to another, you have to add a specific amount of energy (in your case the energy of blue light). 3. AAnd one correction: In water it is tetrahedral, not octahedral, sorry.

I've been toying around with the idea myself. I have the luxury of being able to scavange parts from old instruments (have several parabolic mirrors), but have been looking at mirror free ideas. Some comments/thoughts: 1. The source light is usually introduced through an aperture. A hole of around 50-100mm in a piece of Al would work fine. 2. I have found a component source, but haven't found a price http://www.axetris.com/infrared_sources_products.htm 3. I recently found out that the motion sensors (IR) actually use a mid-band detector, LiTaO3. Some IR manufacturers are offering this as a low cost (re:not great) option. The sensitivity is not phenonmenal, but is extremely affordable on a DIY budget. 4. You do not need a CCD for the grating method, the LTO detector would work. That being said the gratings will determine the resolution, each step in the grating will correspond with the measureable wavelength. For good resolution, you will need to be able to have steps less than a micron. 5. You do not neccessarily need a HeNe for mirror positioning, it helps with stability of signal however. You may be able to use a high end solid state. I wonder if the laser/detector components of a CD player would work? 6. Beamsplitter is the highest cost component of this. You are correct in that it degrades over time in air. I have seen one melt! You could use ZeSe, but will lose a lot of throughput or a Ge-coated which will still degrade eventually and costs much more. DO NOT BUY A USED BEAMSPLITTER! 7. Grating may be the way to go for DIY. Here is one I found real quick for under $200 http://www.lightsmyth.com/products/nanopatterned_diffraction_gratings/linear_groove.php . I would shop around, however. I imagine that it is possible to build a system under $1000.