Another thread brough up some old memories. So here are my goofs in science. Anyone in science can relate. And remember I was a trained professional. Liquid Nitrogen: One time my frozen cell vials fell to the bottom of my liquid nitrogen tank and were flotaing on the liquid nitrogen. I had to get them out of that predicament. I reached my protective glove in and tried to pick them off the top of the freezing liquid. The protective glove got wet, almost froze my fingers off, and so I came up with plan B. I opted to pour the liquid nitrogen into a big container on the floor and then scoop out my cell vials as they floated. I poured the liquid with great success. The container held up for about 5 minutes and then i watched in horror as it started to crack and then explode. Ever see terminator 2? The liquid nitrogen shot across the floor like a pool of blood, hit my shoes, and then began to vaporize. I ran like hell. My socks were frozen solid. But I survived and I was able to revive my cells. So it all turned out ok. Bunson Burner: I accidentally left the bunson burner on and left the room. Normally this is ok. But I happened to leave it on underneath a cabinet containing some volatile solutions. By the time I got back the solutions were spewing all over the place. Good fun. Autoclave: I was told that a material was safe to put into the autoclave. An autoclave is a big heat-pressure driven oven that sterilizes equipment. The problem is you must use heat resistant containers inside of it. Otherwise they melt. Well, I didn't, and when I opened up the autoclave I found the biggest pile of wax and utensils I've ever seen. The container melted and formed a big pile of goo. When it cooled down it formed a solid rock. I took three days to clean that thing out. Heating it up. Scooping out the wax. And then letting it cool down. Did this repitition like 9 times. Very bad. Very big mess. Very big pain in my ass. HCL: In college for some reason I determined that HCL would be the best treatment for my warts. Don't know why. But I tried it and it worked like hell. No more warts. Ever. I'm still a little concerend about some of the effects it had down the road tho'. Rats: My job was to disect out a portion of the brain from a rat's fetus before they were born. Pretty cool. The only problem was that when I made my disection mommy rat came out her coma. Wholly ****! She was not happy to see my scapal taking apart her gut. That is not good. I had to act quickly and cut her throat. Big screw up. Busted Pressure pipe: One time a pressure filled water pipe broke in my lab. The water came out like a rocket. My lab partner was trying to chest the water back into the sink to no avail. We had a good inch of water on the ground before maintenance could shut it down. I swear I saw boats floating down the hall. Water was everywhere. THe people at Bristol Myers squibb made fun of me for a long time. This was not my fault however. Good times. Gotta love those college years.
When I was in Boarding school in England we broke into the chemlab and stole half an ounce of sodium. Then we shot it into the pond behind the school with a hunting sling shot at about 4 in the morning. About a quarter of the water in the pond and numerous fish and other wild life were exploded up onto the shore and the sound was unbelievable. The police were called by the school but they couldn't figure out what had happened. They thought it was a bomb but they didn't know what kind or why someone would bomb the pond. The best senior prank ever at our school.
My dad once found a gravity bong that I created, and left on the back patio. The idea didn't take off with him really well.
Psj, I was laughing up until this one: I hear similar stories from the mbiol students in the lab I code for. I think I should pursue a phd in plant/chemical ecology stuff.
We used to take out pure sodium and potassium from chemistry lab and just randomly go around blowing stuff up. Now that's fun. The potassium was even more fun because of the fiery combustion as opposed to just the BOOM of the sodium. The other thing we used to do was just steal random chemicals and mix them together to see what would happen. I remember we sat in school and just started dripping stuff onto the carpet one by one not knowing what all we were putting together. We got bored because we didn't see anything happening. As we started walking away, we noticed smoke start to rise from where we had been pouring stuff onto the floor. So I, in my infinite wisdom, began to stomp on the smoking area and the carpet just peeled up. Of course we ran out there before we were discovered. I used to go from outlet to outlet in our chemistry lab betting people I would take fairly standard gauge insulated wire and stick it into electrical sockets. I said I'd put one end into one side and the other into the other hole in the socket. I blew up a lot of sockets that way... but made some money in the process. You couldn't pay me to do that today. I don't know why we're so stupid as kids.
When a good friend of mine worked as head lifeguard for our neighborhood pool, we discovered that chlorine shock and brake fluid made some cool explosions. we blew up some cans and various other containers in the name of science. Some of our less ingenous friends found out how what we were doing and decided to recreate our magic. Firstly they had no access to chlorine shock so they broke into the pool and stole it. I'm not sure where the brake fluid they used came from but I'm sure it they did not acquire it by leagal means. And for their masterpiece they had to find a container. They brilliantly chose to use a large glass bottle(I'm sure you can see where this is going). They buried the bottle halfway into a pile of sand, mixed the ingredients and then finally realized they were going to blow up a glass bottle. All 3 took off running but did not get far enough away. One of them had a laceration on the back of his leg that required stitches. THe ATF came out and investigated and I think they received some sort of reprimand with "If you do this again you're going to be prosecuted".
Not my screw-up, but I was definitely involved. I was in my organic chemistry lab class, doing some expiriment along with the rest of the class. This particular assignment involved ether, so no bunson burners allowed. We had to heat the solution using a hot plate. Everything is going along fine, everyone is working at their own pace. The prof is in his office. One guy decides the heating was moving too slow, so he turns his hot plate up to full. A few minutes later...you guessed it...POOF! Spontaineous combustion. He's yelling "I'm on fire" and runs from the room. Everyone else starts getting out quick. Well, being the hero I am, I stop at the door and grab the fire extinguisher and go back in. I PASS...pull the pin, aim, squeeze, and sweep. Fire out. I stop, take a deep breath, look around...and see three large bottles of ether open, plus everyone else's expiriments sitting out. The Prof comes running in at that time and almosts faints. He looks at me and says "You went back into a room with an open flame and open bottles of ether?" You could have been blow to bits! Looking back on it, it was a pretty stupid thing to do.
I never had a chemistry set, and I've never taken a chemistry class. Can someone please explain this whole sodium thing to me? I've already discovered on the Internet how to make it. Sounds dangerous. Good thing I didn't know about that when I was younger. What KIND of explosion would you experience with one ounce of pure sodium? Sounds like you can't even keep the sodium out of some type of special container because it's so reactive. What did you do? Sneak it out to the lake, then open the container, then throw it in? Just curious. At first it sounded like something fun to try out the country for cheap entertainment.........now it just sounds too dangerous.
My HS chem teacher put it this way. If you had a mason jar full of the stuff and threw it in the river, you would blow half of a small city up.
Here's a quicktime video It has something to do with an electron from a high energy orbit being reduced to a low energy orbit in the resultant products, and the fact that elements in that particular column are somewhat unstable (stuff on the left is overly energetic, while stuff on the right tends to be more stable/more compact electron orbits?), but I've managed to forget the little bit of chemistry I knew in the past 10 years.
From what I remember, the "pure" substance (from Lithium/Sodium/Potassium down through Francium) reacts with water and displaces the hydrogen to form a metal hydroxide, then the hydrogen sometimes combusts because of the excess heat produced. The reaction is awesome, even for a very small piece of sodium. My Chem II teacher in high school told me about a kid that stole a piece of pure sodium and put it in his pocket, big mistake, got a bad burn... Link Video Here of Sodium Reaction
I burned my lip because I had stolen a piece and still had some on my hand. I kind of wiped my face during the next period and I felt this intense burning sensation on my lip. Yeow. That hurt. Potassium is best if you want some serious fireworks... a very fiery burning spectacle. Sodium is just pure BOOM! To be honest, I didn't think an ounce of sodium would cause that much of a blast. Hmm... dunno.
Wow. Thanks for the story... reminds me not to go back to my office for unnecessary reasons in the middle of Organic lab (say, to hit "reload" on cc.net.... just kidding, I don't do that during lab ). Of course, though I stay in the lab almost all the time, it's always when I've run out for something or have my back turned that something squirts or blows up in someone's face. These have all been very minor (say, a pipet bulb blowing), but they're a good reminder of why we all wear those ugly glasses in the lab. <b>Sodium</b> metal has one electron in its outer shell. Yes, this is considered unstable. Atoms like to form complete outer shells; those on the left side of the periodic table want to get rid of the one or two electrons in their outer shells, and the shell underneath that will then be the outer (complete) shell. Sodium will give the electron to anything that will take it, including species that weren't ionized before. Water, of course, ionizes easily. (The "atoms on the right side of the periodic table" either have complete outer shells already (far right column) or can form covalent bonds with each other (diatomics), and are therefore not as reactive in pure form.) This reminds me... I can't wait until my educational video of "25 reactions that are too dangerous to do in your lab" comes in...
