No experiments today!!! I was glad and sad at the same time...but it's not the end of it. I had to take a break from doing experiments so that I could analyze the data I had already collected. So first of all I had to record all the areas from the ten experiments I performed on Thursday. Each experiment had its own graph and the graphs each had 3 peaks: methanol, water and 1-octanol. So I had to take the area under each peak for all the experiments - it wasn't as bad as it sounds; the computer did the calculations for me, I just had to record the numbers. :)
After collecting all the data, I entered them into Excel together with the actual data I had made up (the actual percentages I used in making up the solutions for the experiments)...then I had to do some 'tedious' calculations on Excel to find the percentage of the total area for each component (methanol, water, 1-octanol), then the sum of the percentages (both from the data taken from the GC [the raw data], and the data I had created while making up the solutions [actual data] ). I then had to graph the actual data against the raw data, and had to get graphs that were linear and passed through the origin - but that wasn't the case with my data.
It turns out you have to "normalize" the data (I'm still trying to understand what that means). So I had to figure out response factors for the 3 components, then use them in the same calculations I had done before -then plot the graph again. This time it wasn't so bad; the graphs were almost linear, and not so far from the origin.
So, next time I will probably try to smooth out my experiments (make sure my injections are perfect) and do the same thing all over again...hopefully the graphs will turn out better!
After collecting all the data, I entered them into Excel together with the actual data I had made up (the actual percentages I used in making up the solutions for the experiments)...then I had to do some 'tedious' calculations on Excel to find the percentage of the total area for each component (methanol, water, 1-octanol), then the sum of the percentages (both from the data taken from the GC [the raw data], and the data I had created while making up the solutions [actual data] ). I then had to graph the actual data against the raw data, and had to get graphs that were linear and passed through the origin - but that wasn't the case with my data.
It turns out you have to "normalize" the data (I'm still trying to understand what that means). So I had to figure out response factors for the 3 components, then use them in the same calculations I had done before -then plot the graph again. This time it wasn't so bad; the graphs were almost linear, and not so far from the origin.
So, next time I will probably try to smooth out my experiments (make sure my injections are perfect) and do the same thing all over again...hopefully the graphs will turn out better!
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