Chez Brivett
Class of 2005
George Washington Carver H.S. for the Sciences
Topic: Analysis of B Vitamins
About:
During the summer of 2005, I participated in a summer research program at Hofstra University with Harlem Children Society. These organizations gave me the opportunity to work in a laboratory environment and do an actual experiment. I worked with Dr. William Nirode on a project about the analysis of B vitamins. I worked Tuesdays to Thursdays and attend conferences Mondays and Fridays at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. At the conferences at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, we were introduced to other students and their works. We got to interact with others and got to learn about their researches as they presented it to us.
We also had several quest speakers at the conferences, thanks to Dr. Sat Bhattacharya, who made all of this possible. Dr. Sat got professional business people, and doctors to come and talk to us. One day managers of Chase Manhattan Bank came and talk to us about money management. These meetings were great; I learned a lot from Dr. Sat and the students. I learned about AIDS, Cancer, Celiac disease and many more research that the other students did. At the end of the summer session, I attended the annual Harlem Children Society Street Fair in Harlem. Dr. Sat gave us the opportunity to interact with experts, as we presented our work at the street fair. We had to present our project while being judge. Judges like Dr. Susan Fahrenholtz walked around along with television cameras as we talk about our projects. We also got to talk to people from various colleges and the Museum of Natural History.
All this opportunity gave me a sense of how doctors and scientist work in their career. It enhanced my goals in life, gave me more confidence in my future career. Thanks to Dr. Susan Fahrenholtz, Dr. Sutton, Dr. William Nirode, and Dr. Sat Bhattacharya, I now have a better idea of what laboratory work is like. I would like to thank all these people and their institution and/or their organizations for giving me this great opportunity to work as an intern in a laboratory.
Experience:
I worked with my mentor Dr. William Nirode, a professor at Hofstra University in a laboratory project involving the analysis of B vitamins in various energy drinks. We worked with Riboflavin (Vitamin B 2 ), Pyridoxine (Vitamin B 6 ), Cobalamin (Vitamin B 12 ), and Niacin (Vitamin B 3 ). We analysis several energy drinks, (Full Throttle, Mad Croc., Energy Venom, Red Rush, KORE, and Stacker 2), for the concentration of these vitamins with various methods, including a Uv-Vis scan and a Fluorescence scan.
We first had to create a stock solution of the vitamin we are working with, by weighting out a specific amount, adding it to a beaker, and then diluting it with a solvent. Then after we created the stock solution, me made several dilutions from the stock solution and then run them on a UV-vis Spectroscopy or Fluorescence Spectrophotometer. The machines then produce a graph, which shows the absorption point or the fluorescence intensity. We then take the points produced and insert them into Microsoft Excel to create a calibration curve, which produced an equation in which we substituted the intensity points of the energy drinks' fluorescence, or absorption scan.
We then run the same procedure for the energy drinks, and get a graph, which shows the fluorescence or absorption points. We then take the points and substitute them in the equation produced by the correlation curve, and then do the calculations to get the concentration of the vitamin in that energy drink. We then compare the concentration we get to the concentration that we were supposed to obtain. We then do this same procedure for the other B vitamins and energy drinks.