Finish the Grignard with Sam

Fancying the red dress that Sam’s wearing today, you decide to {if Sam == 25} stick with {else} go with {endif} the girl with the tits and alabaster skin for lab this week. Chris is more than happy to work with Jess, and so the two of you approach the girls with a swagger befitting Sicillian mafiosos.

“Why hello,” Chris says, throwing an arm around Jess’ shoulder. “You look like a girl in need of a guy to carry her through this lab.”

“You think?” she asks, looking awfully comfortable in his arms.

“I do,” Chris says, and with that, he picks her up bridal-style, carrying her back to your lab bench.

Jess lets out a squeal of delight, the two of them laughing as Chris sets her down again. Meanwhile, Sam shoots you a bemused glance.

“Have you got an actual pick-up line for me?” she asks, raising her eyebrow.

Wordlessly, you wrap your arms around Sam’s waist, lifting her off the ground. She lets out a surprised yelp, her body pressed tight against you, arms grasping onto yours.

“Oh sorry, I seem to have picked up something even better,” you say, earning yourself a giggle from the hot girl in your arms.

Her tight little red dress is barely appropriate for class, much less this lab environment, and you let your imagination run wild for a moment, thinking of ripping off that dress, splaying her over the lab bench, taking her right there…

But you set Sam down instead, saying: “Let’s get a start on this lab, shall we?”

“I didn’t think you’d be the kind of guy to let me down so quickly,” she smiles, still holding on to your arms.

“Oh, that’s how you know I’m a bad guy,” you laugh.

A couple minutes later, you’ve retrieved last week’s vial from storage. After rinsing it a couple times with ether and lightly shaking it, it’s separated into a dark red ether layer on top and a clear layer on the bottom.

“The lab manual says the ether layer should be a pale yellow,” Sam says, frowning as she consults her notes. “Did we do something wrong?”

“Nope, that’s just the iodine we added to catalyse the Grignard reaction,” you say. “Once we pipette out the water on the bottom, there should be a way to restore the color by reducing the iodine to just iodine ions… let me think…” You take a second to look at the vial in Sam’s hands, getting a nice peek of her tits along the way. “Got it. Washing it with sodium bisulfate should do the trick.”

“How’d you do that in your head?” she asks, faintly amazed.

“It’s not hard, once you know what the end goal is,” you say. “Here, look.”

You scribble down the relevant reaction in your lab notebook, showing it to her.

“Oh wow, I guess that makes sense,” she says, still looking at you in awe.

You resist the urge to burst into a wide smile, instead beginning to work on separating out the two layers in the vial via several rounds of pipetting and washing. With Sam helping you out, it’s a straightforward task.

“We’re just trying to isolate the Triphenylmethanol,” you say, as you prepare an aqueous solution of sodium bicarbonate. “So we’ll need to wash the ether layer in both this solution and a sodium chloride one—do you want to get that ready, Sam?”

“Already on it,” Sam smiles, heading off to gather some table salt.

A couple minutes later, and you’ve finally finished washing the ether mixture. You heft the nearly full waste beaker full of water, and Sam laughs, still holding the pipette in her hand.

“Is this how you work out those big muscles of yours?” she asks, watching you lift the beaker.

“That’s right, a hundred reps a day,” you answer wryly. “Okay, we’re making progress on the lab. Have you got the sodium sulfate ready?”

“Oh whoops! Forgot we had that coming up,” Sam says, and she heads off again to get some.

After another few minutes, you’ve mixed in the anhydrous salt, and then decanted the ether solution into yet another beaker. Now, this next step calls for low heat... you go and grab a hairdryer, which Sam looks at, confused.

“Are you trying to say something about my hair?” she asks, running a hand through her blonde locks.

“Somebody’s vain today,” you smile. “The hairdryer’s to evaporate the ether. What, did you think that I’d pay any attention to how you look?”

“I’d assume that’s why you picked me up earlier,” she says, watching with interest as you begin blowdrying the ether.

“But then I let you down again,” you counter.

“So you did,” she sniffs, acting high and mighty for a moment. “How rude of you.” Then, she looks back at the crude mixture that’s remaining in the beaker. “And this… this yellow stuff is what we’ve worked so hard to get?”

“It’s still impure,” you say. “There’s biphenyl mixed in with the triphenylmethanol. But with a bit of hexane, a Hirsch funnel, and the marvelous process of trituration, we’ll be done in no time at all!”

“But then we’ll have to write up the lab,” Sam groans. “That’s the part of lab I always hated most.”

“Pity that you’re not my actual partner,” you say. “I’m pretty sure the TA’s only going to accept my report if Chris’ name is on it.”

“So just put his name down, and Chris can submit that copy too,” Sam shrugs. “I’ll just submit whatever Chris and Jess write up .”

“I’ll go ask them if they’re game,” you say, relishing the chance to spend a couple more hours writing up this report with this hot girl by your side.

Sure enough, Jess and Chris agree to the plan, and before you know it, the three hours for the lab have gone by. Unlike some of the groups floundering around, you managed to finish with the practical portion with about an hour to spare, and you spend the remainder of it flirting with Sam, working out the first part of your lab report.

Sam +25
Jess +10
Chris +5