Subject: 425 Lab Issues Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:25:05 -0500 From: Petr Vanysek Dear Colleagues, I just received 4 new digital multimeters, ordered for 425 labs. This completes various orders for supplies that I have made during this semester to replenish or replace what was missing. I hope that you will find the laboratory in better shape than it was when I took over. The meters are a Tenma Brand 72-7770, serial numbers 1070168701 1070168714 1070168715 1070168718 The following is a list of supplies/equipment which the teaching assistants thought would be useful in the laboratories. I have not done anything about it, but I believe the suggestions have merit when we are planning to distribute the departmental funds for the next fiscal year: 1. Bottle-top dispensers for stock solutions 2. New Thorne Smith Standards for several quantitative labs 3. Top loading balance (to 100th of gram) 4. New pH electrode (Preferably ones without guards so they can be cleaned well after titrations) 5. A couple more potentiostats that work properly 6. Silver wire electrode for the potentiometric lab 7. Another pH electrode that will be be used for the potentiometric lab (needed to make TISAB) 8. New frits for Ag/AgCl electrodes 9. Ferrous ammonium sulfate salt. It might be also good idea to teach the use of pH meters and make sure we have some in working condition. I was asking about it already last year, April 2nd 2006 and did not receive any response. Here is my letter again. - - - Gentlemen, As I was helping some people with experiments in 425 I noticed that we perhaps have as few as one - or maybe none - pH meter available for our analytical labs. In the little store room next to the 325 labs there are total of 3 pH meters, all labeled "bad." Unless I am missing some stash of instruments, somehow in the last ten years some dozen pH meters have disappeared. I'd like to engage all of us in the following, perhaps e-mail, discussion: 1. Do you know of any working pH meters for 325/425? 2. Do you think we have any need for pH meters for teaching 325/425? 3. If we do have need for these instruments, then we should ask for them in the next round or released departmental funds and THEN we need to establish procedure how these instruments will be kept up. I had proposed earlier that the replacement for Charlie Caldwell should be in a routine charge of inspecting 325/425 instrumentation - as a job description, rather than upon request by a TA. - - -