Where is the best place to find caffeine at Purdue?
Your initial thoughts may turn to the dining hall, as it is the most convenient to obtain one’s daily fix of coffee. After that you may consider Starbucks or Greyhouse coffee, but I submit that the best place is neither the well established chain nor the local cafe, but the Wetherill Hall of Chemistry. As you walk into the building and see the names of famous chemists engraved on the walls like Marie Curie, you are immediately struck by the structure of caffeine illuminating the hall.
The reason behind the caffeine was the 9 AM lecture about spectrophotometry. With our summer sleep schedules being set in the double digits, waking up before 8 has been challenging. In order to benefit from the lecture, one must be awake after all, and this one was especially important because we learned about a tool that we would be using for the rest of the program.
As we walk through the campus we see bunches of flowers perfectly positioned to boost our mood after our brains have been stuffed full of biochemistry.
On the way back from lunch we pass through the center of a park and clap to hear the echo.
As we arrive in the lab building, we all cram into the elevator to go to the fourth floor.
In the lab we stored our proteins, and checked the concentration of our protein by mixing the protein with a dye, and comparing the color to the colors of known amounts of protein. We then checked our sample using a technique which will allow us to visualize which proteins we collected.
And after a long day in the lab, the sight of rabbits hopping by gives me the energy to hop on back to the dorm.
My name is Yuvan. I am a rising senior from Saint Louis, Missouri. In my spare time I enjoy solving Rubik’s cubes, watching movies, and playing board games.
