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Author: Subject: Bad days in the lab or with glassware?
JJay
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[*] posted on 16-10-2015 at 22:01


I once saw a 25 gram vial of bromine dropped on a dorm room floor. It broke. I immediately dumped a few hundred grams of sodium thiosulfate on it, but the room had to be vacated for several hours.
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100PercentChemistry
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[*] posted on 17-10-2015 at 13:49


Grrr:o
Some manganese dioxide from a battery I was directing just spilled everywhere! This stuff really stains. It was very wet, so i vacuum filtered it. It got all clogged up so i tried to remove it when is spilled and stained my lab coat, shoes, pants, and now my gloves are black from cleaning it up. It spilled over the floor, and some of the carpet(I know carpet is bad in the lab, I will remove it someday). It was good sized spill, about 230g of wet manganese dioxide, that splashed into tiny pieces everywhere.

[Edited on 17-10-2015 by 100PercentChemistry]
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JJay
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[*] posted on 18-10-2015 at 21:41


Quote: Originally posted by 100PercentChemistry  
Grrr:o
Some manganese dioxide from a battery I was directing just spilled everywhere! This stuff really stains. It was very wet, so i vacuum filtered it. It got all clogged up so i tried to remove it when is spilled and stained my lab coat, shoes, pants, and now my gloves are black from cleaning it up. It spilled over the floor, and some of the carpet(I know carpet is bad in the lab, I will remove it someday). It was good sized spill, about 230g of wet manganese dioxide, that splashed into tiny pieces everywhere.

[Edited on 17-10-2015 by 100PercentChemistry]


Oh yeah, carpet in the lab is the worst! You wouldn't believe how much carpet gets eaten by one drop of 37% HCl....
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violet sin
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[*] posted on 19-10-2015 at 17:32


Been doing a little work with Pt and a Pt/Pd ~50/50 alloy... Spilt the little catch tray with filings, shavings and dust with a few cut bits.... AHHHHHHRRRRRRRGGGGGGG.. MOTHER FU℃¥€®!!!

of course it almost made it to the table, almost. Instead it flips a few times and empties it self all over a pile of junk I have been meaning to clean up. Yet hadn't. Pile of tools, wire and a bucket of wood scraps. Mainly in the bucket. But all the bits are aligned with end grain up so won't be easy to free the grains of metal from rough wood.... I had a feeling that was going to happen, but pushed the though aside.

It was somewhere on the order of 0.5 - 0.75g, no huge loss, and I did find the largest piece, closer to a gram and a half. But some times you are just so mad at your self for valuing time more than proper eticute like cleaning up one in a freaking while.

Not actually a chem project at all, jewellery. But I had been keeping strict tabs on how much loss was occurring in different steps... All for naught now. Total genius :(
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The Volatile Chemist
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[*] posted on 24-10-2015 at 12:30


Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
I once saw a 25 gram vial of bromine dropped on a dorm room floor. It broke. I immediately dumped a few hundred grams of sodium thiosulfate on it, but the room had to be vacated for several hours.

Why did you have bromine, but more importantly, sodium thiosulfate, in your dorm?




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JJay
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[*] posted on 24-10-2015 at 22:21


Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
I once saw a 25 gram vial of bromine dropped on a dorm room floor. It broke. I immediately dumped a few hundred grams of sodium thiosulfate on it, but the room had to be vacated for several hours.

Why did you have bromine, but more importantly, sodium thiosulfate, in your dorm?


I had sodium thiosulfate for cleaning up bromine. Why did I have bromine? Curiosity.
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[*] posted on 24-10-2015 at 23:42


Unfortunately thiosulphate is not very effective against bromine in the gas phase. :-)

At first I wanted to strengthen my comment along the lines of "... it surely was a great experience to have you as a neighbour or room-mate..." - but abandoned the idea because I quickly realised that I also did a few stupid things in the dorm.

Maybe the "nicest" was when I made a little bit of nitrogen-triiodide and put the wet slush on a tissuepaper on my shelf for drying. Then I left the room for study in another place and forgot everything about the triiodide.

When I came back atfer an hour or two my roommates were pretty excited, door and windows wide open, they were frantically jumping all over the place, laughing, etc. because the compound on the paper just finished the drying a few minutes before I came back! And of course the end point of the drying process was the self-destruction.

Fortunately nobody was hurt, no shrapnel any sorts just bits and pieces of torn tissue paper here and there, and halogene smell in the air.

So I think they liked to have me as a room-mate.
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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:07


Who didn't have bromine in their dorm room? My favorite dorm chemical was sodium peroxide.
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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:24


All this guys-sleeping-with-guys stuff has helped reassure me that the decision Not to go to Uni was the right one.

Add Bromine accidents, NI3 and ANY peroxide lays the matter to rest in my mind (such as it is).




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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:36


Haha, hilarious. I probably wont ever live in a dorm, but I still have a year and 3/4s of high school, so...
I tried making some NI3 by putting tincture of iodine solution (and some sulfuric acid, hoping to produce iodine from the KI too.) and ammonia solution in a good sized container. No precipitate was formed. Any suggestions? Sorry if you consider thread derailing a crime.




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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:49


Synth calls for I2 and NH3.

That would be a highly basic solution ...

Check yourself into the nearest Chem Synth correctional facility immediately.




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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:50


Haha, OK...I'll try again without interfering with the norm...



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[*] posted on 25-10-2015 at 14:58


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtxJnqVnPR4

Over here it's all Povidone with all the polymer stuff in it, not 'Tincture'.

Edit:

Interfering with the 'norm' is fine, so long as one understands the 'norm' very well and can explain and demonstrate an improved working procedure.

Your good idea didn't work, so the 'norm' is better (currently).

Doesn't mean your idea was wrong, maybe just the calculations or execution.

Science !

[Edited on 25-10-2015 by aga]




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[*] posted on 26-10-2015 at 01:01


Quote: Originally posted by aga  

Over here it's all Povidone with all the polymer stuff in it, not 'Tincture'.

[Edited on 25-10-2015 by aga]


Try to locate a Russian pharmacy. I've heard that they exist in Western countries, in large cities. Many old-timey prescriptions can be found there, including iodine tincture.




Smells like ammonia....
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[*] posted on 26-10-2015 at 04:37


Quote: Originally posted by ave369  
Quote: Originally posted by aga  

Over here it's all Povidone with all the polymer stuff in it, not 'Tincture'.

[Edited on 25-10-2015 by aga]


Try to locate a Russian pharmacy. I've heard that they exist in Western countries, in large cities. Many old-timey prescriptions can be found there, including iodine tincture.


Don't even consider looking in Canada, some recalls a few years ago and a couple this year ended up with confiscation of the medications/chemicals. They were recalled because of "mislabelling". It was because the label was in Russian.




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[*] posted on 26-10-2015 at 08:39


Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist  
Today my lab in AP chem went rather badly. The teacher decided to switch from using great glass burettes for titration to using a crappy plastic 'burette' with a drop counter and pH meter. Our drop-counter would not calibrate, but my teacher insisted we try again until it was too late. My lab partners will be repeating the lab during their lunch, but since I have a class that period, I cannot help...

Quote: Originally posted by aga  
A Plastic Burette ?

World's gone mad.


Holy hell, I have seen some stupid things happen to schools but this takes the fucking cake. I think this is what Volitile was talking about :

http://www2.vernier.com/booklets/vdc-btd.pdf

I like where it says "NOTE: This product is to be used for educational purposes only. It is not appropriate for industrial, medical, research, or commercial applications."

So my question is, IF YOU'RE TRAINING FUTURE EDUCATORS, CHEMISTS, DOCTORS, AND RESEARCHERS, WHY WOULD YOU USE THIS?





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The Volatile Chemist
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[*] posted on 27-10-2015 at 17:05


Yup, that's it exactly. Terrible. Guess what? We're using Vernier stuff all year! (well, most of the time we use glass burettes and no tech., but whenever data needs to be graphed, we use the vernier handheld devices.)



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[*] posted on 27-10-2015 at 20:32


Quote: Originally posted by missmendeleev  


Don't even consider looking in Canada, some recalls a few years ago and a couple this year ended up with confiscation of the medications/chemicals. They were recalled because of "mislabelling". It was because the label was in Russian.


The trick is to know what to look for. The iodine tincture is labeled with the word ЙОДА. If you research some Cyrillic alphabet, it says "Yoda". For the true Jedi, this tincture is.

[Edited on 28-10-2015 by ave369]




Smells like ammonia....
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[*] posted on 6-11-2015 at 05:12


Today, after a long day involving several reactions and distillations using numerous pieces of glassware, I dropped a magnetic stirbar down the drain and had to fish it out with another stirbar and a piece of wire. :o

[Edited on 6-11-2015 by JJay]
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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 15:20


Yech. Our basement sink was totally wrecked by my chemistry hobby. I'm totally buying my family another when we move out (from guilt, not obligation)...



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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 20:13


Yesterday I was reacting the MnO2 from an alkaline battery with hydrochloric acid, to get Manganese (II) chloride. After dissolving the MnO2 pieces at room temperature (with lots of chlorine gas evolved), it was getting dark (not surprising when nighttime starts at 5:30 around here, thanks daylight savings time). I decided to boil the reaction to completion indoors, since it seemed to have mostly reacted. Needless to say, my basement was soon full of chlorine gas! Luckily I have much practice when it comes to filling rooms with toxic gases, so I held my breath and stopped the reaction, then told my family to avoid the basement for the night. They were surprisingly understanding. The basement in now aired out, and no one has pulmonary edema, so it's all resolved now :) . I now have a problem of finding an outdoor lab in the land of the eternal night, however...



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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 20:38


Quote: Originally posted by TheAlchemistPirate  
Yesterday I was reacting the MnO2 from an alkaline battery with hydrochloric acid, to get Manganese (II) chloride. After dissolving the MnO2 pieces at room temperature (with lots of chlorine gas evolved), it was getting dark (not surprising when nighttime starts at 5:30 around here, thanks daylight savings time). I decided to boil the reaction to completion indoors, since it seemed to have mostly reacted. Needless to say, my basement was soon full of chlorine gas! Luckily I have much practice when it comes to filling rooms with toxic gases, so I held my breath and stopped the reaction, then told my family to avoid the basement for the night. They were surprisingly understanding. The basement in now aired out, and no one has pulmonary edema, so it's all resolved now :) . I now have a problem of finding an outdoor lab in the land of the eternal night, however...


That's why I don't use that reaction. I tried it once and hated every bit of it. Extremely slow and produces tons of gas. The presence of all that gas above the reaction makes the reaction proceed even slower. Something you might look into instead is using oxalic acid with sulfuric or some other acid. No toxic gases produced at all with this one. Vinegar even works in place of sulfuric acid, though it goes slower.
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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 21:00


Nurdrage has several good videos showing a few different techniques on that one. My next attempt will be to bubble SO2 through. Burn sulfur in a tuna can under inverted funnel. A vacuum pump pulls the gas through the MnO2 mix and then through a NaOH scrubber. The advantage of this method is that it tends to leave the Fe contaminants alone. Therefore, when you filter, you get a reasonably pure solution of MnSO4.
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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 21:40


Strangely the resulting solution (after filtering out the carbon) didn't seem to have any Fe chloride impurities at all (energizer batteries). I did wash the MnO2 with dry acetone before the reaction due to a misunderstanding of a procedure, but the MnO2 was in massive chunks when I did that...
I still don't understand why chlorine gas is evolved, since it is reacting with the manganese and other metals to form chlorides. Shouldn't this reaction only produce water or something similar as a biproduct?
The crystals are beautiful though, and I probably won't try making them again as I haven't heard of any use for the compound other than simply being a good way to store manganese.




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[*] posted on 10-11-2015 at 21:57


Well, that question is easy.
MnO2 has Mn in +4 oxidation state. MnSO4 has Mn in +2. To reduce the Mn something else must oxidise.
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