The saga continues…
After stirring in acetone overnight to dehydrate, I decanted off the acetone and left it to evaporate just in case something dissolved. The little white nugget was dried under vacuum for 2 hours, then crushed to get a small sample for IR.
Mystery Goo drying under vacuum after dehydrating in acetone overnight
Evaporation of the acetone supernatant left no noticeable residue. A bit of the white solid was ground with KBr and then pressed into a pellet.
Not my best KBr pellet, but better than some I’ve tried to make.
The FTIR spectrum looked relatively clean with the typical CH and/or NH peaks and enough going on below 2000cm-1 to be consistent with a polyacrylamide.
Expanded view of the 2000-400cm-1 region of the Mystery Goo FTIR spectrum
Is this definitive? Not at all. Is it “consistent with” polyacrylamide? Sure. I might try a few more things, but not right now, other duties call…
Everything Under The Copper Sun 