/sci/ - Science & Math

A condenser leaked water in the the grignard reaction of a friend. Was fun to witness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident

>>7235774
poor guy, hope he got better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
makes me shit-scared of dimethyl mercury.

>>7235788
Yup, back to work in under a week.

>>7235774
Jesus christ, just read all about it

I didn't think Japan would keep someone alive

First year student in an organic chem lab doing a mini project. Making a low concentration mixture of nitric acid and H202 for cleaning some silicon, we need a fair amount so do it in a big 10 liter flask. Using a master student's hood, he has supervisory responsibility for us. Guy is a prick.

>Make sure to put the lid on that shit real fucking tight, I don't want your chemicals messing up my experiments, I dont even want you in my hood but Im stuck with you so just dont fuck my shit up, ok?

whatever you say, boss...

H202 and acid decompose and produce lots of gas. Pressure builds up. 10 liter bottle (glass, of course) fucking detonates in the middle of the night. Everything inside of the hood is absolutely destroyed. All his experiments. Blue cap is lodged permanently in the ceiling of the hood.

>mfw he had to fill out all the accident reports and take personal responsibility for his bad call, and gets chewed out by the old man in charge of the chemistry department in front of the entire lab.

Seriously tho, Im just glad that bottle didnt explode while somebody had their face next to it.

>>7235736
Apparently, there was some girl at gatech some years back that touched some bad juju and she died within 24 hours because of it. Forgot what she did exactly, but she was a chem major in a lab.

A chemican killed himself a few years at my uni:
He lay down under a tank of liquid nitrogen and opened the ventile. Know clue how he killed himself this way but I bet it isn't very comfortable.

>>7235774
It's that an actually picture of one of the workers? If so I presume Ouchi.

>>7235825

>Masters student

Yeah of course he's both a faggot and an idiot. He's the biggest loser there.

>>7235832
Yes
https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Hisashi-Ouchi-kept-alive-for-83-days-against-his-will-in-unimaginable-pain-and-suffering

>>7235832
>ouchi

lol..

>>7235798
>mfw reading Ignition
>mfw he casually mentions that they tried dimethylmercury at one point but dropped it since the performance wasn't that great
>mfw imagining synthesizing several liters of it to test-fire in rocket engines
i never understood why people would ever even consider this sort of shit:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/
until i read that damn book

>>7235736

The worst one I personally witnessed was just a titration where the girl then somehow managed to knock over the entire apparatus that then knocked over a bunch of glassware on the desk that then all broke/fell on the floor.

The chemicals weren't very strong so it wasn't that bad. It was just really loud, and dramatic because the girl started crying hysterically.

>>7235861
who's that semen demon?

>>72359
Tori Black without heavy makeup, think it's the intro to first time anal

my high school biology teacher told us about a lab he was in where someone was heating up a bunch of agarose and didnt swirl it in the microwave, and it bumped in open air and sprayed molten agarose all over her

History of Science

>>7235736
Concentrated HF spill in the lab next to the one where I was working, one guy was sent to the hospital and that's the last I heard or seen of him. Fire dept. had to clean up.

>>7235736
Not really an accident, but an unpleasent incident nevertheless.
>First day in new lab
>Bioinformatics
>Wet biology labs all around
>Everyone eats together at 1400
>1200, already hungry as shit
>Keep seeing people walking around from their labs to some central room with trays
>Assume this is where you're supposed to eat
>Go have lunch, no one in the room
>There's nearly nothing there, only a big table and lots of trays
>Eat my food and get back to work

Turns out one of the labs researching antibiotic resistant bacteria was moving there. Luckily I didn't contact anything, and they have certain antibiotics the bacteria are sensitive too that they can use for killing them, but sure gave me a heart attack when I found out.

>>7235736
I hate to derail the thread, and I could totally ask this in sqg, by what causes, under the right circumstances, coffee to flash boil?

>>7236207
formation of a meta-stable gas liquid mixture after nucleation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation

>>7235831
That's pretty fucking hardcore.

>>7236172
Wouldn't concentrated HF either evaporate when spilled or just, you know, immediately react with anything that wasn't teflon?
What's there to clean up?

>>7235831
>Hasta la vista, life

>>7235825
What the fuck, does he not understand the purpose of a fume hood? A mass balance will show the chance of contamination is almost impossible if the hood is set up correctly.

>>7236202
Never eat inside a lab, go the cafeteria or at least a sealed touch down area.

A grad student was had forgotten to screw down a mirror in a system designed to guide a laser with peak power in the Terawatt range (enough power to turn the air it's passing through into a filament of plasma). He reached above the setup while the laser was on (he'd forgotten a piece of hardware up there for phase measurements) and knocked the mirror down, which redirected the beam at him while it was falling. The poor sap got nearly blinded in one eye and a burn streak across his face.

Another guy a few years back accidentally reached through the path of a similarly powerful beam and some of the flesh on his palm was vaporized, along with a 3rd degree burn streak from when he yanked his hand out in pain.

>>7235831
Fuck cleaning that up. How was a lab even set up to allow that to happen?
You're German, yeah?

>>7236290
>was had
had*

It's been a long-ass day of finals.

>>7236290
This is some straight-up James Bond villain shit.

>>7236297
>This is some straight-up James Bond villain shit
Kek. Laser filaments do have some benign applications (i.e. long range spectroscopy, LiDAR) but our lab is partially military funded, so their undisclosed uses for it might be up that alley.

An incident that decided which grad program one of my professors didn't go to
>girl working with powdered acrylamide
>hood isn't properly calibrated
>shit ton of powder gets blown back into her face

The worst one where I was present was when the lithiation of C6F5Cl (go figure) went haywire. Hood was partially down, girl was partially sprayed. No serious injury sustained.

More along funny were:
- idiots trying to "boil" their analytic glass filters in acetone. In an open beaker. Over a bunsen burner. Upon pointing out the idiocy, they shut the operation down before anything happened.
- student gets aluminium alloy to analyze and fails to make it dissolve in acid (fuck if I know what went wrong). So student decides to melt it together with Na2O2 and Na2CO3. Mixture ignites in his absence, noone realizes until the people from the building opposite our figure out the telephone number of our lab and call the supervisor.

>>7236291
>How was a lab even set up to allow that to happen
wut, lots of schools have liquid nitrogen setups like that to share cost

one lab in a building rents a tank of liquid nitrogen that every other lab uses, they write how much they take on a sheet and fill up their dewar

>>7235831
Ice cold killer

Should have cryogenically stored his brain.

>>7236290
How can that even happen unless half of the safety precautions aren't practiced?

I worked with IR lasers during an internship at a startup (so no money for all safety equipment and huge time pressure).
We were working with a 5W IR laser to develop some laser cutting system.
Boss/founder wants to check what's happening: 'without laser glasses I can see it better' and puts his head under the optic shield. He also moved the sample with his bare hand while the laser was on. Before he got the lab space he just used the laser at home without any optical foam around it.

video of a 2W laser we used earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f8YlcXF6ho
All the light flashes is burning cardboard, wavelength was 1208 nm IRC

>>7236290
>>7236333

What the fuck are you studying at what kind of Hogwarts ass school

>yeah a student was so inept he got scarred for live and nearly blinded himself
>haha what a fuck up take him to professor dumbledore

>>7235762
What, watching nothing happen? Lol. How was ochem lab for you fishy.

>>7236276
>What's there to clean up?
The students that didn't make it.

>>7236406
Long wavelength IR lasers don't focus on the retina so eye safety is less criticial for them. The cornea and vitreous body is probably opaque to the wavelengths so there's no risk of getting any retinal burns whereas visible wavelengths pass throught he cornea and vitreous body AND is focused by the lens into a tiny tiny dot on the retina.

>>7236406
>How can that even happen unless half of the safety precautions aren't practiced?
He had moved from an IR beam experiment to one with where the beam's wavelength is chopped via harmonic generation, and didn't bother to change his glasses to match the new wavelength. Careless shit like this happens on long days in the lab.

>Boss/founder wants to check what's happening: 'without laser glasses I can see it better' and puts his head under the optic shield. He also moved the sample with his bare hand while the laser was on.
Kek, if he weren't the boss that would be grounds for banishing him from the lab. It's a wonder he wasn't injured in some way or another. Nice video btw, I'd like to design a personal laser cutter one day.

>>7236409
>What the fuck are you studying at what kind of Hogwarts ass school
Photonic Engineering, and the terawatt lasers aren't in the curriculum, it's just a lab I work at in the university's optics research facility where a lot of high-energy research goes on.

Is it bad to have two classes a semester?
this is my current weekly plan witg four classes, if nothing comes inbetween:

Monday
08:15-10:00 genetics
10:00-12:00 mathatics study group
12:00-14:00 organic chemistry
14:00-16:30 go home and eat, wash dishes.
16:30-19:00 work
19:30-20:30 work on math exercise
20:30-21:00 read genetics book in bed.
21:00 prepare for sleep.

Tuesday
08:15-10:00 genetics
10:00-12:00 math study group
12:00-14:00 OOP with Java
14:00-16:30 get home and eat, wash dishes.
16:30-19:00 work
19:30-20:30 work on organic chemistry
20:30-21:00 read genetics book
21:00 prepare for sleep.

Wednesday
07:00-08:00 work on math exercises
08:00-09:00 work on org. Chemistry
09:00-09:30 prepare for college
10:00-12:00 math class
12:00-14:00 group study math
14:00-16:00 OOP Java
16:00-16:30 eat something Satiating
16:30-19:00 work
19:30-20:30 math
20:30- 21:00 genetics
21:00 prepare for sleep

Thursday:
08:30-10:00 org. Chemistry
10:00-12:00 group study math
12:00-14:00 org. Chemistry solutions
14:00-15:30 eating
15:30-16:30 Java
16:30-19:00 Work
19:30-20:30 copy my own math solutions or copy from friends.
20:30-21:00 Genetics book
21:00 prepare for sleep

Friday:
08:00-11:00 math tutorium
11:00-12:00 copy the rest of math solutions and hand them in.
12:00-14:00 math class
14:00-16:00 java tutorial
16:00-16:30 eat
16:30-19:00 work
19:00-21:00 gym
21:00-23:00 Hang out with roommates

Saturday:
07:00-09:00 prepare and go buy groceries
09:00-10:00 math exercises
10:00-11:00 org chemistry
11:00-12:00 java
12:00-13:00 bio
13:00-14:30 eat and prepare for work
14:30-17:30 work
17:30-19:00 play the guitar
19:00-20:00 self study math
20:00- ? Hang out with friends

Saturday:
Rest day
Gym in the evening.

>>7236492
Sorry wrong thread.

>>7236492
If you can fit your weekly schedule into a single post, you aren't doing enough with your life.

>>7236492
The fuck? 12 hrs of work a day?

>>7236409

>>yeah a student was so inept he got scarred for live and nearly blinded himself
>>haha what a fuck up take him to professor dumbledore

>>7235736
My uncle is a professor at *PI, and runs the machine shop there.

>start cleaning out a donated pressure tank
>Dump contents down the sink
>hear hissing sound
>turn around to see white fume issuing from the drain
>evacuate now

Turns out some bozo had donated an unmarked tank of BF3, when it hit the water in the drain, it created friendly HF.

>>7235861
It's a damn good book and a damn good blog.

>>7236207
It's fairly common for water heated in microwave ovens to be superheated, and to flash boil when tea or coffee is added.

Chloroform in hand

>Worse Lab Accidents Thread
>No Demon Core


First incident
>On August 21, 1945, the plutonium core produced a burst of neutron radiation that led to Harry Daghlian's death. Daghlian, a physicist, made a mistake while working alone performing neutron reflection experiments on the core. The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective tungsten carbide bricks and the addition of each brick moved the assembly closer to criticality. While attempting to stack another brick around the assembly, Daghlian accidentally dropped it onto the core and thereby caused the core to go critical, a self-sustaining prompt critical chain reaction. Despite quick action in moving the brick off the assembly, Daghlian received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later from acute radiation poisoning.[4]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

>>7237084
Pffft. I do that all the time, and I've only had to have two tumours removed.

>>7237087

Second incident
>On May 21, 1946,[8] physicist Louis Slotin and seven other Los Alamos personnel were in a Los Alamos laboratory conducting an experiment to verify the exact point at which a subcritical mass (core) of fissile material could be made critical by the positioning of neutron reflectors. The test was known as "tickling the dragon's tail" for its extreme risk. It required the operator to place two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around the core to be tested and manually lower the top reflector over the core via a thumb hole on the top. As the reflectors were manually moved closer and farther away from each other, scintillation counters measured the relative activity from the core. Allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. Under Slotin's unapproved protocol, the only thing preventing this was the blade of a standard flathead screwdriver, manipulated by the scientist's other hand. Slotin, who was given to bravado, became the local expert, performing the test almost a dozen separate times, often in his trademark bluejeans and cowboy boots, in front of a roomful of observers. Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be "dead within a year" if they continued performing it.

>>7237089
I've gotten dichloromethane in my eyes before. No apparent long-term damage... yet.

>>7237094
>On the day of the accident, Slotin's screwdriver slipped outward a fraction of an inch while lowering the top reflector, allowing the reflector to fall into place around the core. Instantly there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second.[10] He quickly flipped the top shell to the floor. The heating of the core and shells stopped the criticality within seconds of its initiation,[11] but Slotin's reaction prevented a recurrence and ended the accident. Slotin's body's positioning over the apparatus also shielded the others from much of the neutron radiation. He received a lethal dose of 1000 rads neutron/114 rads gamma[5] in under a second and died nine days later from acute radiation poisoning.

>>7237096
The worst thing I've ever done in the lab was probably taste lead nitrate, even then I spat it out after and probably got less of a dose than I would spending a day in Beijing from all the polluted air.

>>7235825
Lel dumfk
Could make a decent spud cannon with that setup

>>7237097
Wow. Based demon core.
Also kekked at Fermi's reaction.

I tasted deionized wasser

>>7237127
DIDHMO?

>>7235998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-zdOi65Opqg#t=143s

I spilled a bit of Benzene and some LiAlH4, had some blisters, gone after a weekish assume it was from the benzene.

>>7239605
I was under the impression that benzene wasn't an irritant. People used to wash their hands with the stuff.

>>7235825
>H202
Well shit, how did you even get <span class="math">\mathrm{H}_{202}[/spoiler].

>>7237045
>Turns out some bozo had donated an unmarked tank of BF3

>>7237087
the thread is for personal stories, not for showing off that you read wikipedia