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/sci/ - Science & Math

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12625976 No.12625976 [Reply] [Original]

have you ever accidentally destroyed any lab equipment?

>> No.12625981

>>12625976
That wasn't me.

>> No.12625987

no, none beyond mass produced/single use glass ware
i have the agility of a cat

>> No.12625993 [DELETED] 

>>12625976
Yes lol
I think I'm naturally clumsy and my hands are really big and don't fit my proportions
Quit research after destroying things and messing up too many times

>> No.12626002

>>12625976
No, but fucked up the calibration of some crucial equipment hard

>> No.12626004

I once broke my computer because I was angry

>> No.12626024

>>12626004
gamer moment

>> No.12626035

>>12625976
Columns, round bottoms, erlenmeyers, test tubes aplenty. Work long enough and it'll happen.

>> No.12626047

>>12625976
Yeah, I did. I was taking out some lab equipment
on table including a long mercury thermometer.
It began to roll away from me. When I looked back
to get it, it fell on the floor and broke.

Being responsible, I tried cleaning up the larger
pieces with my hands when the teacher ran over
and stopped me. Pretty much, that mercury
would absorb in me and cause poisoning if I
used my hands and it has to be vacuumed up.
So, yeah, be careful around mercury.

Also, don't grab a glass beaker with your bare
hands without knowing whether it's hot or not.
A few times to learn that, too.

>> No.12626066

>>12626047
>hot glass looks like cold glass
>>12625976
no but I know someone who did this.
>put these beakers in the acid bath and then in the oven.
he put the acid bath, with all the glassware in it, in the oven.

>> No.12626202

>>12625976
> marine science anon
lab equipment, no
field equipment, yes

>> No.12626272

>>12626047
>mercury can be dangerous
no?????? really??????????

>> No.12626279

>>12625976
No. But I have destroyed some on purpose

>> No.12626290

>>12625976
Yeah, one time I had some flask or something on an elevated platform and it slipped, knocking a small beaker off the table. glad I never broke anything super expensive, not that we have to pay for it, just don't wanna be a leech on society.

>> No.12626378

>>12625976
Fuck yes. As a geology student. Mostly specially prepared slides of rocks. So we could gaze lovingly at all the fucking minerals. We were told how time consuming and expensive these slides were to make. We were told if we broke them we would have to pay for them. Cant remember exactly how much and it was a long time ago, perhaps $60 to $100 in today's money.

The scopes we had were retarded though, with no way to lock descent above touching the slide and cracking it. A simple screw would have done the job. You literally had use incredibly fine movements to bring it into focus and not crack the slide. Naturally towards the end of a three hour lab you were getting a bit careless. I broke lots of them over various lab sessions. But fuck paying for this shit, I kept quiet and would just make them vanish. Probably most of the lass did this. But this one guy down the bench from me. Fuck he was an idiot. Every time he broke one he would make some loud exclamation like "Oh shit" and the lab techs or prof would come over, have a look, and write him up for the cost.

Oh yeah, the scopes were used for nothing else, just these rock slides. I think of the thousands of dollars lost by students over the years because those retarded fuckwits couldn't be assed putting a stop screw into the carriage.

>> No.12626390

>>12625976
not "lab equipment" like biology/forensics equipment
but i once blew up a computer in a customer's lab while i was working on their site by plugging a 240V mains power supply into a 110V power supply unit
(the power supplies were not clearly labelled)
it made an impressive flash and tripped a circuit breaker. the computer never recovered.

>> No.12626523

>>12625976
>Be me
>Join condensed matter group
>PI and lead PhD student gives instructions
>Tells me to rotate handle on doer clockwise
>Bit stiff, but I get it to turn
>Next day sample broken
>Doer broken
>Anon why did you twist it wrong way, it's locked in
>....
>Quit group

>> No.12626536

In the lab alone at 4 in the morning. The centrifuge screw comes loose. Oh, the grinding sounds. Oh, the horror. The fucking horror.

Luckily it only caused scratches inside, but man that was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. Responsibility is a fucked up emotion.

>> No.12626574

>>12626024
lol

>> No.12626585

>>12625976
We were running chemical reactions with a condenser to prevent solvent runoff. My mentor had just been leaving the condenser running overnight so I figured this wasn't an issue and they pretty reliably stayed on and/or the hoods had their own internal drainage component so if they broke off it wasn't an issue. My mentor left the country but I had been working long enough that the PI let me continue in the lab on my own.

One day I left the condenser on when I left, when I came in the next morning it had come off. The entire lab, like 40-50 feet long and fifteen feet deep, had flooded with apparently an inch or two of water, but it was mostly gone by the time I came in. After we finished cleaning it up, the PI had me go along ALL of the trim in the room with a screwdriver and paper towels to clean up any water that gotten stuck against the bottom of the benches.

On the plus side two weeks later I got him confirmatory results on this stupid chemical process that had taken us like a year to nail down, and then wrote the protocol for it.

>> No.12628017 [DELETED] 

>>12625976
yep, have blown up some LED's and fried some capacitors

>> No.12628033
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12628033

>>12625976
I almost accidentally killed the lab teacher.
Had one of those mercury thermometers almost explide in her face flaming hot.
She movedit before it was too late.

>> No.12628044

>>12628033
This on top of the several times I almost gravely injured myself, like burning my tongue with acid on a solution filled with hydrochloric acid.
And all the neurons I've lost because of the shitty exhast fume.

>> No.12628045

>>12625976
we did a stress test with a tokamak in a underground cave in michigan and blew it up causing what everyone thought to be was a earthquake. we almost changed the planets orbit and fucked up the entire planet. just joking. lol. good story tho eh?

>> No.12628107

I accidentally btfo'd a pretty large Spectralon panel. That was a shitty day.

>> No.12628112

>>12626047
Only fags are afraid of mercury poisoning. You can pick it up with your hands just fine. Even drinking it's probably not going to do anything to you. Don't breathe the vapor for a long time basically.

>> No.12628145

>>12628045
uhhh no?

>> No.12628155
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12628155

>>12628145
well okay maybe it's more of a horror story but that all depends on how much you like this planet and it's life i guess.

>> No.12628169
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12628169

Had concentrated sulphuric acid drip onto my leg once because someone spilled some under the fume hood.

I didn't notice it had happened initially as it burned a hole through my trousers, then It hurt quite a lot as it burned through my skin, then it stopped hurting either because the water worked to dilute it worked or it got to my nerve endings.
Ended up with two fingertip sized third degree burns from maybe a couple millilitres of solution.

>> No.12628349

>>12626004
>>12626024
Same here! School-issued computer.

>> No.12628352

>>12625976
>accidentally
No.
>purposefully
Absolutely.

>> No.12629538

>>12625976
>have you ever accidentally destroyed any lab equipment?
yes, often with the precise intention of stealing it

>> No.12629666

I made a liquid nitrogen container explode in the parking in front of the lab whilst refilling it. Accidentally dropped the metal feeding tube in the container, shattering the vacuum insulating glass interior.

Shit was hella dope (and loud).

>> No.12629669

>>12629666
devilish

>> No.12629672

>>12625976
I set fire to myself once, does my lab coat count as lab equipment?

>> No.12629675

>>12626066
>he put the acid bath, with all the glassware in it, in the oven. lmao walking safety hazard

>> No.12629681

>>12625976
I know someone who put weird stuff in the centrifuge and fucked it up. Turns out mice and doughnuts do indeed separate into layers.

>> No.12629682

>>12629681
Topkek

>> No.12629683
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12629683

I dropped a mercury thermometer in middle school and the teacher got angry

>> No.12629689

>>12628112
When you drink mercury, it will sink to the bottom of your stomach and most likely seep into tissue outside, since it's so dense.

>> No.12629690

>>12626047
>>Also, don't grab a glass beaker with your bare
>hands without knowing whether it's hot or not.
>A few times to learn that, too.
with metal too

i keep failing at this.

>> No.12629691

>>12626536
The big 50k G ones will literally go through 3 concrete walls if they fail catastrophically.

>> No.12629705

>>12629690
There are heat receptors in your hand which can detect radiating heat from anything, just don't be so quick at grabbing things.

>> No.12629800

>>12626035
How'd you break a column? Retard

>>12626523
>doer

I broke a Dewar flask too. Pretty bummed since it was my favorite one from chemglass

>>12629690
Same

>> No.12629830

>>12626202
You broke a dolphin?

>> No.12629874

>>12629830
maybe a net

>> No.12629901

Not necessarily my fault but a condom my partner was using broke in the lab once.

>> No.12629933 [DELETED] 

>>12629901
>a condom my partner was using broke in the lab once
how did this happen?
did you partner sodomize you anally?

>> No.12630178

>>12625976
I have a suspicion I fucked up an AFM by making it crash at high speed
Noone found out the exact reason why it broke

>> No.12630190

>>12625976
Yes. On day one, a glass rod slipped from my hand. In front of class. Was awkward af.

>> No.12630653

>>12629691
>50k G

300k G or go home

>> No.12630832

To the undergrad retard who keeps breaking the EBSD detector in the SEM facility, I want to wring your neck

>> No.12631214

>>12625976
A lot, then i switched to theoretical work, and have been breaking my own head since

>> No.12631226

I accidentally the whole particle accelerator.

>> No.12631232

>>12625976
>he actually balances the centrifuge

>> No.12631233

>>12626047
Only the vapours are really dangerous, too big to pass unruptured skin. Still, if you work with it daily you might absorb some

>> No.12632093

unbalanced centrifuge goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRR *BANG* *screaming* haha

>> No.12633445

>>12625976
>accidently
No.

>> No.12633840

>>12633445
what about
>on purpose
?

>> No.12634122

TA told us to use watchglasses for heating on a hotplate in 2nd year. I tried to tell the dumb bitch that they will break. Lo and behold, the lab punched through 20 odd watch glasses as all the groups followed and most of them broke. funniest shit ever

>> No.12634130

>>12633840
Then yes. High-energy lasers are just too much fun.
>filters
>mirrors
>smaller lasers
Of course we made it look accidentally.

Colleague of mine managed to destroy a mixture cryostate. Fun times.

>> No.12634141

>>12625976
No, it was already chipped I just didn't see it was broken until I used it.

>> No.12634267

Not really lab equipment, but I fucked up a telescope mirror trying to clean it before. My parents got me a used telescope for my birthday one year and the mirror was too dirty to see anything out of and my attempt to clean it (and I did try very gentle hands off measures) ended up just making shit worse. It was a garbage scope anyways so nothing of value was lost but still.

>> No.12634481

>>12634130
why did you destroy it? are you a dindu?

>> No.12634705

>>12625976
yes, thousands, potentially over 100k$ worth

>> No.12634724

I broke a 100k laser and was shitting my pants and spent 3 weeks fixing it.
The lab next to me ruined a $2m experiment by forgetting to turn off a heater that they had to warm it up, and ended up melting some parts that couldn't be salvaged. One of the grad students got fired.

>> No.12634907

>>12634724
>grand student
you mean master's student?

>> No.12634956

>>12634907
*grad

>> No.12635320

>>12634481
What part about
>huge lasers are fun
was difficult to understand?

>> No.12635379
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12635379

>>12625976
Crashed the vaccum in a TEM once. It didn't break, but took 24 hours to repair.

>> No.12635418

>>12635320
im ESL

>> No.12635422
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12635422

>>12625976
yeah
messed one of these up
fml

>> No.12635423

not accidentally, no

>> No.12635448

>>12625976
A fellow PhD student broke a million-dollars machine which is supposed to melt metal pellets under pressure. A thermometer broke, and the temp went up to 4000°C without notice. Some expensive mechanical parts melted.

>> No.12635485

>>12629691
Someone in a lab I used to work at forgot basic procedure and didn't stay with the centrifuge when it was spinning up. He had somehow forgot the fiberglass inserts the bottles needed to be placed in before placing them into the rotor. Whole thing went off balance and the 20kg rotor tore out of the centrifuge and planted itself into the wall. They still tell this to everyone who is being introduced to the centrifuges. Everytime I used that rotor I'd stress about it and it didn't help that after the repair the centrifuge would never be perfectly balanced and always have a slight judder which didn't cause anything but was unnerving. Still so paranoid about cebtrifuges that I can't leave even a clothes washing mashine alone before it has started the wash cycle after weighing the load.

>> No.12635487

>>12634907
no, phd. there are no physics masters students in my school

>> No.12635504

Only thing I've broken myself was a 2 (or 5, can't remember) liter Erlenmeyer flask. Was using a vacuum pump and someone had put regular Erlenmeyer flasks on the same shelf as the ones used with vacuums. Didn't pay attention and grabbed it. Imploded pretty much right away. Still have a red spot in my eye from a tiny shard of glass.

>> No.12635658

I clogged a few HPLC columns

Luckily our MS device didn't get fucked up since that shit costs way more

>> No.12635704

Was so afraid of my boss (a grad student) at my first undergrad lab that I never dropped a thing, never a single glass.

About halfway thru my PhD (~7 years into research) is when I started to get more careless. I've probably broken 5 beakers or cylinders in total due to neglect.

>> No.12636319
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12636319

>>12625976
Worst i did was break a pHmeter. Not a big problem, but it is a big deal in a third world country
3rdworldcountrysufferingGang
Worst ive seen is some Mofo breaking the rotatory shaker and another Mofo breaking the plastic containers for Falcon tubes in the microcentrifuge. It was fixed with superglue

>> No.12637071

>>12636319
what country?

>> No.12637213

>>12626390
The fact that power inlets don't have some safety measure to prevent this type of mistake is really retarded

>> No.12637331

When I was writing my grad thesis I used to trip the breakers in the lab many times.
Since I was the only one working there, it was just a matter of flipping it back in the panel.
One time though, I shorted a circuit that had such a capacitance that I bypassed the lab's breakers and shut down power to half of the department for half a day, until the electrician came to fix it.
My fucking face when all the phd candidates slowly went home looking daggers at me.

>> No.12637623

>>12635658
did you major in chemistry?

>> No.12637654

A guy at my uni got kicked out of the 3D printing lab for "lubricating" the printers' lead screws with mayonnaise. In response to this, he promptly went into a computer lab and cut all the keyboard, mouse and monitor wires with scissors and was thus expelled.

I wish I was joking.

>> No.12637797

>>12637654
lol
was he autistic or something?

>> No.12637809

>>12637654
Should have been executed, fuck expelling him. He's just gonna ruin some other place

>> No.12638016

>>12637797
It's an engineering university, so autism is basically a requirement for admission

>> No.12638150

>>12637654
Wouldn't he go to jail for that kind of thing?

>> No.12638305

>>12638016
top kek

>> No.12638480
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12638480

>>12637071
Chile.
>inb4 first world country
Read the fucking news, we are at a commie revolution right now, we were a fake first world country now we africa tier

In science we always were shit. No funding at all. No private investment

>> No.12638555

>>12638480
>we are at a commie revolution right now
sad
why Chile?

>> No.12639296

>>12638480
mfw Chile is indeed 3rd world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World#/media/File:Cold_War_alliances_mid-1975.svg

>> No.12639765

>>12629666
damn son

>> No.12639781

>>12637654
fucking kek

>> No.12640842

>>12638555
>why Chile?
Our left wing always had a strong commie party. While left wing governments who took after Pinochet from 1990 to 2005, they never put commies into power. That is until Bachelet (now at UN, go figure huh) allowed them into government positions. That die Chile started slowly to die as the ancap pinochet meme becoming just another regular commie infested demoncracy.
Also the commies got huge funding from Venezuela and thus from China for the uprising
I fear a similar shit will eventually will happen at US and western europe

>> No.12640843

I had a growth chamber overheat and ruin my poor little arabidopsis
but it wasn't my fault

>> No.12640905

>>12626536
I once broke one in this way. Something about the axis getting twisted. My profs didn't exactly get mad, but the whole group bullied me because of that.
Now time has passed and that incident has been long forgotten, but I got a trauma on working with centrifuges.

>> No.12640918

>>12640905
>ever admitting to any wrongdoing in a lab whether it's your fault or not
>ever putting up with shit lab groups give you
ngmi

>> No.12640924

>>12640918
I was new to lab, I've learned since then

>> No.12640964

>>12625976
I destroyed my lab partner's pussy, yes.

>> No.12641225
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12641225

>>12625976
In grade twelve I put a flame to pic related filled with hydrogen.

Needless to say there was glass partials that landed on the other side of the room, luckily they did not intersect anyone on their way across the room, despite the class being full of maybe 20ish students.

>> No.12641228

>>12640918
>Not owning up to your mistakes

You are the last person I would ever want to trust in my lab. I pray to never work with you.

>> No.12641341

>>12641228
Owning up to your mistakes gets you fired and scolded I'm this society. Sorry bro, but if you manage/finance a lab, you're the reason why.

>> No.12641396

>>12626536
do you major in chemistry?

>> No.12641439
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12641439

>accidentally

>> No.12641494

>>12640964
kys normalfag

>> No.12641857

-i once set a lab oven on fire with a student.

-i spilled an entire Mercury vacuum gauge on someone else's notes (whoops)

-ive broken hundreds of flasks, beakers, funnels etc....

-ive never owned a lab funnel more than twenty minutes before breaking the end off.

Eh what are you gonna do?

>> No.12641959

>>12641857
>-i once set a lab oven on fire with a student.
how did it end?

>> No.12642504

>>12641857
>Eh what are you gonna do?
Fire you, probably

>> No.12642599

>>12640843
>working with shit tier plant like arabidopsis

Work with real plants you fucking faggot

>> No.12643170

>>12642599
for example what?

>> No.12644637

Anyone ever broke an oscilloscope? I'm curious if its possible; I've used scopes that cost ~60k and was always scared to break it.
-Q

>> No.12644816

>>12641228
Congrats then, by proxy, you pray to never work with 90% of PIs. Admitting your mistakes in most labs is like saying "yes, please scream at me, please blame everything on me from now on, please treat me like shit, I am okay with that." That's what you do when you admit any wrongdoing at all.

>> No.12644940

>>12637213
Yeah I've noticed that on a few different things

>> No.12645881

>>12637213
maybe they have but not in the usa hehe

>> No.12645905

>>12641959
It wasn't our fault, thing was busted with an electrical fault, we unplugged it and waited for the smoke to die down before sending it for repairs. We actually kept it and named it sparky.

>>12642504
I'm a CTO good luck

>> No.12645943

>>12645905
>I'm a CTO good luck
does it mean you are very rich?

>> No.12646541

>>12644816
oh
i expected higher ethical standards from scientists

>> No.12646890

>>12640843
F

>> No.12646923

>>12641341
>>12644816
I'm sorry if that's your experience but I've seen much different behaviour from the labs I've worked in. They want a clear accounting of the fuck up, they want to know it won't happen again.

But when you work with stuff that is legitimately dangerous then not owning up can put the whole lab at risk.

>> No.12647189

>>12625976
I accidentally dropped sequencer on ground in middle of sequencing human lung genome, and it has horrible consequences.

>> No.12647210
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12647210

Wasted like $6k worth of reagents/enzymes. We're a relatively rich lab so it didn't matter, everyone wasted about that much starting out.

>> No.12647220

>>12625976
i once blew a fuse on a multimeter

>> No.12647241

>>12625976
Once I ruined whole computer lab so much it cannot boot.

>> No.12647263

>>12625976
In high school I twisted the faucet spout out of screw.

Didn't know that unscrewing it would cause it to spew water.

>> No.12647448

>>12644637
60k is cheap for a spectrum analyzer or vna.

ESD aka static electricity will get them as will overheating.

The metrology lab is where real chaos happens.

>> No.12647454

>>12625976
Lmao of course not what am I an irresponsible retard?
It was the guy before me I swear it was broken when I arrived

>> No.12647541

>>12634122
Wtf were you doing that required heating a watch glass

>> No.12648806

>>12634122
was the TA a woman?

>> No.12648823

I caused 2 computers to go blue screen purely from trying to create graphs on excel in one class. I think it was the first time my physics professor genuinely considered the possibility of curses existing.

... I wasn't allowed to touch computers for the rest of the course and my lab partner had to do the graphing shit.

>> No.12648831

>>12640842
What is the opinion of pinochet for the average Chilean that's not brainwashed by communism?

>> No.12649501

>>12648831
bumping the question

>> No.12649551

>>12629689
Elemental mercury isn't really that easily absorbed, so most of it will pass through.

I still wouldn't recommend experimenting, though.

>> No.12649643

>>12649551
what if i break a thermometer with mercury in aquarium with an axolotl?