SCIENCE During the Lent Term on Wednesday Afternoon activities, Tonbridge School and Tonbridge Grammar School collaborated in an interschool science investigation to form a Chemistry Research Group.
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The Research Group
ive pairs of students were split into two smaller sets, with one investigating a method to measure the conductivity of ionic solutions and the other to synthesize ionic liquids (IL). Ionic Liquid Synthesis Through knowledge of basic chemistry, we know that ionic compounds tend to be crystals, e.g., table salt (sodium chloride). However, new discoveries found that it is possible to create ionic compounds in a pure liquid form. As ionic compounds can be easily modified, their properties can be changed by great magnitudes and thus be customised for many purposes, making ILs revolutionary in many industries. In the laboratory, this can be achieved by adding different anions which essentially change the chemical composition of the IL. Current applications include lubricants and electrolytes, and more research is still undergoing to find promising novel uses of IL. Within each individual group, students investigated various aspects of IL. For example, Rachel (from Tonbridge Grammar School) and I looked at different ways to synthesise ILs, whereas Chris Halford (PH)
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and his pair specifically investigated microwave synthesis. The entire project took over 7 weeks, and once we had finished all the experimental stages, the results were analysed at Queen Mary’s University London, using extremely advanced and expensive technology. Thankfully, all the products were exactly what we intended to synthesise. Ben Zhao
The ionic liquids we synthesised
