Day 4

Today was a long and successful day. I finished all of the samples for Trial 1. I also began and finished all the samples for Trial 2. ( Trial 1: Caffeine and Guafinesin & Trial 2: Lidocaine base and Lidocaine HCl) This means I have about 16 IR readings, not including the 'blanks' that I ran in between each sample to make sure that there was no contamination. The results that were expected still seem to be found also with Lidocaine. Tomorrow I will hopefully finish the third Trial and start making the mixtures for the fourth Trial. (Trial 3: Benzocaine and Lidocaine & Cocaine and Crack) Everything is coming along smoothly and it seems as if I will have plenty of time to finish my research at the Sheriff's Office.

Day 3

Exciting news, the IR machine is fixed! I actually got to start running the samples that I made for the first trial. I started with Caffeine and Guafinesin. I tested 100% Caffeine and 100% Guafinesin on the IR first. These results were important for a good comparison to the other samples that I would be testing. I also ran 54% Caffeine(46% Guafinesin) and 27% Caffiene(73% Guafinesin) samples on the IR machine. These results showed what was expected. It was expected that since there was less caffeine on the second run then the peaks representing Caffeine would be smaller. I again was able to see how cases that come in the lab were handeld. Today was a very productive and I expect tomorrow to be as well.

Day 2

Today I arrived at the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office at around 8:00 and left around 3:15. Today the samples for the third trail was made. The Sheriff's Office was very busy this morning so I was able to watch Ashley Harris asses some cases that were brought in. There is another Forensic Chemist that works with him, Beth, and I was also able to see her techniques today. The IR machine might not be fixed until tomorrow or Thursday, but I will continue to make samples until the IR is up and running. Progress is being made slowly, but the experience is amazing so far!

The First Day

Today was an exciting day and also the first day of my Forensic Science Internship. I discovered within minutes that the research that was planned had been placed on the back-burner for a more interesting and important topic. I will be working with IR equipment. More details are to come about exactly the methodology of this experiment.
I am working with Ashley Harris at the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office. He is a Forensic Chemist and I hope to learn as much as possible from him in the month during Interim. He introduced me to the Infrared machine and unfortunatly it needs to have a part replaced so that part of the research may be delayed, but other aspects can be addressed while this problem is being attended to.
I am measuring out mixtures of certain substances and mixing them together; these substances will eventually be measured by the IR machine once it is running. I measure how much of these substances by having a pure sample of A and a pure sample of B. I then take 10 %of A and 90% of B and mix then together, and then 20% A and 80% B. And this continues untill I have at least six vials of different percentages of A and B. It is going to start with common substances like caffeine and progess into cocaine. Since pure drugs are most commonly not received in the lab, this research could help to show how the IR machine would react to these different mixtures in percentages of drugs. As noted earlier I will give many more details to how this research progresses. I am looking forward to the next month!