In a fit of enthusiasm, most of the Jesus chemists decided to do an extra practical today, to get one out of the way for Trinity Term. Dr. Fairbanks was the Senior Demonstrator (hence us normally avoiding Fridays). He is actually a good demonstrator (which of course we were expecting), since he makes sure you know what you're doing. He also 'helps'. In Dave's case, this basically involved doing the experiment (Dave didn't object), and in Ed's case this involved losing half his product onto the bench, much to everyone's amusement.   My experiment was one that can easily go wrong. If the slightest moisture remains in the apparatus then the reaction doesn't start. This means that you spend a long time setting the equipment, blasting it with a heat gun, and then hoping and praying that the reaction starts. Meanwhile, Dr. Fairbanks is standing there saying things like 'this is where we find out if you're a good practical chemist'. Most helpful. He did actually help by warming the flask and running reagents into it. For some reason this made me even more tense. The reaction did start, eventually.   After a few hours work, I obtained my product. It was an oily yellow solid with a consistency akin to that of chewing gum. It should have been yellow crystals. Oh well. The Junior Demonstrator was most helpful and saved the day by coming up with various methods of removing the extra water and starting material from my product. In the end, any water left in the sample only increased my yield....   Friday night down the bar was 'Slag or Drag' night. I went to Oriel.   Today's advent calendar image: teddy bear.
			The characters and situations in this diary are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happenings. Any resemblance to such things is coincidental, or just for humourous effect. All names have been chosen to implicate the innocent.