December blog

The perfume team have now extracted oils by four different methods. Commercially purchased oils and our lab extracted oils have been analysed at University and Mr Dixon has gone over the analysis of these oil, there are some differences which we are looking into and trying to explain. Several esters have been made. We shall be looking at how to check the purity of these esters next month.

Major change in the brief for the paint group. The students and the staff have decided that they are going to move away from the Art based project, which in our revised view was too Art based and lacked any real depth of science and moved towards commercial based paints. The new aim is to look at the scientific process behind making paints from base reactants. These should prove to be more interesting as there are several variables that need to be controlled. The group is starting from the bottom up and will have several sessions on practically making a wide range of paints looking at the pigments, binding reagents, the base paint, intensity, consistency, and industry problems of mixing paints. The pupil leader of the paint group has taken a big hands on approach to this project, which one would expect as she wants to be a chemical engineer.

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