Week six: Improvements finally bring improvements

Although this week doesn’t leave me with the most to report for my blog, it has probably been the busiest so far. After creating and testing more pieces of platinum deposited titanium dioxide, I have come closer to finding an optimum loading. So far my optimum loading has come while depositing platinum with a 0.0125 mM concentration of potassium hexachloroplatinate, which improved the performance in the degradation of
Caffeine 58 percent.

I also went back to testing palladium as a modification, yet have not found an optimum loading. My graph comparing moles of deposited platinum versus k/m values is looking very clean. Despite all of the setbacks this summer with the mercury lamp providing poor results, it looks like my data is not only taking a turn for the better in increasing efficiency, but also decreasing variability within a data set.

The week concluded with a parent night for all of the high school interns, parents, and mentors. We each presented about what we have been working on and shared some delicious pizza. As I come to the realization my internship is two thirds of the way finished, I look to the rest of the summer with hopes of testing more modifications and contaminants.