Recrystallization Memes

The perfect encapsulation of organic chemistry lab trauma! While geometry gives us nice predictable shapes with fancy Greek names, recrystallization gives us... absolutely nothing. That beautiful theoretical 98% yield your professor promised? More like "Your%yieldisGON" because those precious crystals decided to take a permanent vacation. The meme brilliantly captures that soul-crushing moment when you realize your painstaking 6-hour synthesis produced approximately three sad crystals, and your lab report is due tomorrow. Chemistry doesn't care about your GPA or your sleep schedule!

Every organic chemist's nightmare captured in one perfect meme! That moment of pure joy when you isolate your product (top panel) - it's beautiful, it's pure, it's EXACTLY what you wanted... until you decide to recrystallize it "just to be safe" (bottom panel). Suddenly your beautiful yield drops from 85% to a soul-crushing 12%, and your supervisor is asking why you needed three more weeks to finish the synthesis. The universal lab tragedy that's spawned the sacred chemist's prayer: "Please don't disappear in purification." The title references the ultimate backup plan - when recrystallization fails, you resort to column chromatography, which is basically playing hide-and-seek with your molecule through a tube of silica while crying softly into your lab notebook.

The eternal struggle of organic chemists everywhere! 90% yield? That's worth bragging about at the next department meeting. 90% purity? That's worth crying about in the supply closet. Nothing says "back to square one" like discovering your supposedly pure compound is actually a chemical jambalaya. The recrystallization gods are cruel masters who demand sacrifices of time, solvents, and occasionally your will to live.