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Author: Subject: Bad days in the lab or with glassware?
Zyklon-A
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[*] posted on 16-1-2014 at 15:47


Just broke one of my Hg thermometers today as well, it over heated and shattered, so stupid of me.:mad:

Hey, look my 200th post!

[Edited on 16-1-2014 by Zyklonb]




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Pyro
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[*] posted on 16-1-2014 at 16:03


I broke one a few weeks ago, it was however inaccurate and the bottom 5 cm were intact so no mercury escaped



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Zyklon-A
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[*] posted on 16-1-2014 at 20:18


Wow, everybody's braking thermometers now.



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elementcollector1
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[*] posted on 16-1-2014 at 20:39


When I was younger, I was tempted to break one on purpose and recover the mercury for my collection. Ah well, I ordered it from Elemental Scientific instead - well worth it.
On topic, I keep breaking glass tubing like tomorrow isn't a thing. Luckily, short lengths of tubing are exactly what I need in most applications...




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Zyklon-A
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[*] posted on 16-1-2014 at 21:41


I once broke three test tubes in one day.



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blargish
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[*] posted on 17-1-2014 at 07:33


Quote: Originally posted by elementcollector1  

On topic, I keep breaking glass tubing like tomorrow isn't a thing.


Story of my life
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UnintentionalChaos
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[*] posted on 17-1-2014 at 23:51


Quote: Originally posted by Eddygp  
A hot test tube dropped in a cold water bath... CRACK! thought it was Pyrex.


Eh, even pyrex has it's limits. Properly annealed quartz or vycor might stand a chance with such severe thermal stress.




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repo1030
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[*] posted on 26-1-2014 at 23:47


I was scraping ammonium nitrate crystals out of a beaker earlier today (1/26/14) when my glass stir rod snapped in half. I cut my thumb which proceeded to bleed quite profusely, despite the cut being no bigger than your average paper cut. Unlike a paper cut though, it didn't hurt very much. My thumb is just a little sore and I can barely see the cut.

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[*] posted on 31-1-2014 at 13:06


Lived up to my name today.
Runaway nitration, which proceeded to deflagration and thankfully stopped short of explosion. Almost burnt my damn house down. The one time I think "Oh I'll just do it inside at a window this time, it's gone fine every other time and it's -20 F outside..." :cool:
Luckily I was wearing goggles, gloves, a respirator and at least keep a fire extinguisher nearby when that voice in my head says "What could go wrong?" So I escaped with some minor HNO3 burns on my my hands and arms, some really watery eyes, a cough, and a slightly well done windowsill.
And nobody even felt the need to call the fire department! :D
I'm waiting for the smoke and fumes to finish clearing out of the room before I start cleaning up all the extinguisher dust...
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UnintentionalChaos
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[*] posted on 31-1-2014 at 23:43


:mad::mad::mad:

Goddamnit. I just broke my 250ml sep funnel (aka: my only useful sized sep funnel) and largest glass funnel simultaneously. Granted, I have not been very kind to the sep funnel over the years (using free flame to break emulsions for example) and it's probably accumulated a lot of internal stress. But I had my back to it (I hold it with a very large castaloy clamp instead of a ringstand) and was filtering some distillate through a cotton plug into the sep funnel when suddenly, CRASH. Maybe I had the clamp a bit too tight or maybe it was just tired of my shit, but it scattered bits all over my bench and the floor. Snapped the neck off my good funnel too, and took 25ml of furfural-laden distillate with it.

I managed to mop up most of the distillate from my relatively clean work surface with a paper towel and wring it out back into the flask, so it could have been worse. So much for representative yield numbers though.




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Mailinmypocket
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[*] posted on 2-2-2014 at 09:58


I flushed a 20$ stir bar down the toilet and didn't even realize it until I was cleaning up and saw the nice clean empty rbf :(
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Pyro
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[*] posted on 2-2-2014 at 16:29


I hate it when that happens. I often tip them out into my waste bottles.



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[*] posted on 4-2-2014 at 21:00


Not really an accident, but because of a recent house addition the county building inspector will be where my lab is.
Because gov officials in my lab in a county touching the worst meth lab county in the state didn't sound like a good idea, and tarps would look suspicious, I am having to move my entire lab to the other side of our basement. Luckily there is an addition with an existing garage door that when closed doesn't look suspicious, (and no windows in it).

Thankfully my bench has all metal drawers and all my glassware and chems are on rollable shelves, but it is still going to be a MAJOR hassle to get done. Arrrggg.

At least I can hopefully not be facing a warrant by backwoods hillbilly cops (I live in what is pretty much the Deep South) or at the least being fined for possible (incorrect storage of hazardous chemicals). I keep my stuff seperate ect. But there is no flammable a cabinet for example., or a gov sanctioned chlorinated waste bin.

I start tomm, fingers crossed I don't break anything. I'm keeping my Dr Bob shipment upstairs till the move is done (arrived today).

(EDIT: Fingers crossed but I have the entire lab moved with no breakages in one direction. Hope for the same on reconstruction. Took over 2 hours)

[Edited on 6-2-2014 by zenosx]




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Brain&Force
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[*] posted on 5-2-2014 at 20:22


I tried dissolving cobalt in nitric acid for a complexation reaction. It was a bad idea to remove the cobalt with a neodymium magnet because it caused the bottom to crack, leaking cobalt nitrate and nitric acid.



At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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[*] posted on 6-2-2014 at 19:56


I was being really clumsy and accidentally bumped my 300 mm Liebig condenser whilst it was resting on a stone table. It rolled over and one of the glass tubing connectors broke off and shattered... Gah



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[*] posted on 21-3-2014 at 15:55


Today I was taking apart a lithium battery to recover the lithium. At one point the battery shorted out, so I chucked it outside before any of the chemicals in it were released. It soon started to smell like H2S, and then it caught fire! Luckily I was ready with a bag of sand to snuff it out... Everything was fine, there were no serious catastrophes ;)



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[*] posted on 21-3-2014 at 21:12


I broke my 2L seperatory funnel...
Then I melted the stopcock out of my 125mL sep funnel...
I'm currently using the upside down remnants of my other 1L sep funnel I broke the stopcock off of a while back (glass, it froze up to the point that I snapped it off trying to twist it) along with a 24/40 stopcocked vacuum adapter when I need to seperate things. It works but I miss having a proper funnel.:(
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[*] posted on 22-3-2014 at 21:17


One time I was scraping some boric oxide off of a glass stirring rod, and it just wouldn't come off. So I got so fixated on it that I just started scrubbing it harder and harder, not even thinking that it probably wasn't the best idea since it's made of glass, until after it had broken into a few pieces in my hands.
It wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that it was my last stirring rod! On my next supplies order, I made sure to buy a copious amount...
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[*] posted on 23-3-2014 at 07:24


Well this is just dumb and it wasn't a big loss.

I was dissolving some vitamin b tablets in acetic acid(vinegar), yea this isn't even chemistry... I was working on a light demo for a presentation in physics (at home so it still counts). So anyways I broke the tablets up a bit by hand instead of using a mortar and pestle. After letting them sit for a few hours I decided to poke at the tablets with a pocket knife. Punched a hole right through the bottom of a small beaker. Not a big deal, figured I'd share a daft moment.

[Edited on 23-3-2014 by smaerd]




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[*] posted on 23-3-2014 at 12:02


Once when i was re-sublimating iodine I lifted the flask on the top off and it instantly cracked in the air (Winter) so i needed to quickly put it somewhere (It was just a little crack so it didn't fall apart) so i put it on the still-hot hot-plate.... a plume of iodine vapor came off so i dropped in into the snow and ran away. luckily it was windy.
I dont know what i was thinking.




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[*] posted on 7-4-2014 at 20:54


I'm new to this forum, but i have my share of stories from high school that i didn't really understand were bad until i came to college and saw how careful (and well equipped) the college chem labs are. In high school, we had a class of around twenty five people sharing a single fume hood in a room with no windows and a tiny vent fan, working with hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric acid, along with sodium hydroxide. We had to boil down acidic reactions often, and while i would always wait in line to use the fume hood, others would not. I realized my chronic trouble breathing for the months i was in that class was because of the horrible ventilation. We were doing qualitative analysis of a mixture with up to fifteen unknowns, if i remember. My chemistry teacher was aware of the issues in his lab, but he didn't have the funding to upgrade it to what he wanted. It was a few years ago.

I remember spilling 12M HCl all the way down my arm one day, but i was able to make it to a sink before it burned me. The person washing some test tubes was very eager to step aside when i rushed up and stuttered 'I spilled acid on my arm!'.
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[*] posted on 7-4-2014 at 22:02


Oh boy. A two fer-

I don't know how I lived to grow up?




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[*] posted on 8-4-2014 at 09:11


Well recently I managed to freeze a glass stopper in my two-necked round bottom flask by leaving an assembled distillation setup overnight (I now know how dumb this was). After trying many different methods and chemicals to free the stopper I ended up attempting to break it off in frustration. I actually managed to safely remove most of the stopper when the neck suddenly snapped off :( . But I had to learn the hard way that you never leave distillation apparatus for longer than necessary.



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Zyklon-A
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[*] posted on 8-4-2014 at 09:16


I broke two test tubes a couple days ago. Not really a big deal though.



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[*] posted on 15-4-2014 at 14:07


A disaster happened in my lab today. I just had transferred my pyridine from my ground glass bottle to a 30 ml polycarbonate bottle. When I came back today after school, the bottle was non-existent and "luckily" for me, all the other bottles under it where made of polycarbonate... The bottles melted up.

About 20 of my reagents are too messed up to be recovered, mixed with melted polycarbonate, pyridine and other reagents that where aside of them...

That was a shitty day, at least I will know polycarbonate is a no-no for solvents...

I'm quite disappointed, I mean, it is like 300$ of chems destroyed... most of which that were very exotic, like vanadium pentoxide etc.




I never asked for this.
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