Fyndium
International Hazard
Posts: 1192
Registered: 12-7-2020
Location: Not in USA
Member Is Offline
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Most expensive mistakes you've made?
Broke a 300$ flask just a while ago.
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macckone
Dispenser of practical lab wisdom
Posts: 2168
Registered: 1-3-2013
Location: Over a mile high
Member Is Offline
Mood: Electrical
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Accidentally throwing away platinum wire on trash day.
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roXefeller
Hazard to Others
Posts: 463
Registered: 9-9-2013
Location: 13 Colonies
Member Is Offline
Mood: 220 221 whatever it takes
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Trying to time the bitcoin rebound two years ago.
One must forego the self to attain total spiritual creaminess and avoid the chewy chunks of degradation.
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DraconicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 4357
Registered: 1-2-2013
Location: The tiniest college campus ever....
Member Is Offline
Mood: Semi-victorious.
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Admitting that there had been a platinum electrode in the glassware that was donated to me, and having to give it back.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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Fluorite
Hazard to Others
Posts: 139
Registered: 26-12-2018
Location: United Arab Emirates
Member Is Offline
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Adding lots of water to my ammonium nitrate calcium hydroxide mixture >.<
I need a pressure cooker to remove the ammonia now 
Or I can just bubble co2 to turn it back to ammonium nitrate! which I can concentrate by boiling
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teodor
National Hazard
Posts: 924
Registered: 28-6-2019
Location: Netherlands
Member Is Offline
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Starting a home lab ... well, I am not sure it was a mistake, because I like it much, but those expenses ... cover everything I do in the lab.
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Pyro_cat
Hazard to Others
Posts: 243
Registered: 30-4-2018
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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I bought all this glass to make a capacitor for my tesla coil but the foil was way to close to the edges and it arced across in several places
breaking three of them. The glass cost and all the effort assembling the thing.
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yobbo II
National Hazard
Posts: 765
Registered: 28-3-2016
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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1) Got married.
2) Filling oil into a (large) vehicle engine and forgetting to put the bung in.
Yob
Oscar Wilde (I think it was him) said he spent 98% of his money on wine, women and song.
The other 2% he wasted.
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zed
International Hazard
Posts: 2284
Registered: 6-9-2008
Location: Great State of Jefferson, City of Portland
Member Is Offline
Mood: Semi-repentant Sith Lord
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I trusted women.
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1326
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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Blew up a $1000 magnetic field probe while poking around inside a power supply. Lucky for me the $25,000 instrument it was attached to was ok.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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ChemTalk
Hazard to Self
Posts: 65
Registered: 13-12-2018
Location: United States
Member Is Offline
Mood: colloidal
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Bought TiO2 and Cr2O3 from a pottery store.
Well those were very cheap mistakes. Our lab is new so the expensive mistakes haven't happened yet. But we spread out funds out and didn't really put
too much money into any one thing.
---------------------------------
ChemTalk
chemistrytalk.org
[Edited on 2-15-2021 by ChemTalk]
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itsallgoodjames
Hazard to Others
Posts: 276
Registered: 31-8-2020
Location: America Lite
Member Is Offline
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I bought $3000 worth of broken iPhones thinking I could fix them and make that money back... I got $400 out of it, losing $2600. That was...fun
Nuclear physics is neat. It's a shame it's so regulated...
Now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing. Still annoying though.
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zed
International Hazard
Posts: 2284
Registered: 6-9-2008
Location: Great State of Jefferson, City of Portland
Member Is Offline
Mood: Semi-repentant Sith Lord
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Ummm. I reiterate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEg25P91rIs
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arkoma
Redneck Overlord
Posts: 1763
Registered: 3-2-2014
Location: On a Big Blue Marble hurtling through space
Member Is Offline
Mood: украї́нська
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qbFPE4f-ms
"We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social
status, nationality, citizenship, etc" z-lib
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myr
Harmless
Posts: 48
Registered: 18-7-2018
Member Is Offline
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I screwed up an 8k scholarship form and couldn't get the money back in high school. I also messed up another scholarship more recently and missed out
on their priory-acceptance track. C'est la guerre.
Chemistry-wise: clamp broke in a rotovap once from my negligence. The hot water almost certainly destroyed the compound, and it's not like I could
extract 500 or so mg from 4L of steaming tap water.
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Fantasma4500
International Hazard
Posts: 1681
Registered: 12-12-2012
Location: Dysrope (aka europe)
Member Is Offline
Mood: dangerously practical
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getting caught, court aint cheap. was never caught redhanded, always some idiotic backhanded unrealistic stuff like a psychotic druggie having crazy
hallucinations and just randomly accusing me
purely chemistry i never had much of a loss, one time i bought a 29/32 distillation set and immediatedly hooked it up to distill nitric acid, turns
out when you hook both ends to a flask it blows up because of pressure! a brainfart, a true wonder no more harm was done having boiling concentrated
acids splashing all over the place, dripping down everywhere
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Dr.Bob
International Hazard
Posts: 2755
Registered: 26-1-2011
Location: USA - NC
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mildly disgruntled scientist
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Not taking 3 bitcoin as payment for a $120 glassware purchase about 12 years ago. I had no idea how to use it or what to do with it... Doh.
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ShotBored
Hazard to Others
Posts: 124
Registered: 19-5-2017
Location: Germany
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Working with pharmaceutical tableting presses, I took a job with a company that was using presses that had incredibly poor maintenance in the past.
The press was a dual compression press, meaning it was supposed to be using top and bottom compression on the punches when making tablets, however I
noticed that they were only using the upper compression and keeping the bottom punch static during compression. Being the young, know-it-all, I
advised that they begin using both punches for compression to get more even tablets, and implemented this in a test run. Little did I know is that
bottom compression hadn't been used in 10 years due to something in the press being broken and simply forgotten about. Adding bottom compression
caused an overpressure event which caused serious damage to multiple subassemblies on the press. $130k later, I got the press running upper and lower
compression after we fixed the stuff that broke because of the mishap...Not 100% my fault, but I still got an ass chewing for it. 
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Fyndium
International Hazard
Posts: 1192
Registered: 12-7-2020
Location: Not in USA
Member Is Offline
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If I were the manager, I would find the guy that left that fault unmarked, and press him into pills.
Most probably it was the actual manager that was at fault, but shit always flows downwards, so..
Talking about bitcoins, I was playing with them at 2011-2012 in large quantities. Most I had at a given time was over 500btc, and the only moment in
my life that I was actually completely broke, I had to sell 20btc for the little around 100€ or something.
I just don't think about it.
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Jenks
Hazard to Others
Posts: 163
Registered: 1-12-2019
Member Is Offline
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I connected a large vacuum desiccator to house compressed air instead of house vacuum. When I went over to see why the airflow wasn't slowing like
usual, that's when the lid (practically glued on by vacuum grease) shot off and hit me in the face. Fortunately, nobody was injured, but I'm always
felt bad about breaking that expensive desiccator.
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