/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5558687]

/sci/duck stories


>be college in my 20's
>working with 10% bromo-methane
>read up on MSDS forms and create a prelab procedure
>some other dumbass kids didn't read the part about how bromo-methane was highly volatile and poisonous to breath at almost any level
>they get their samples and don't pour it into their stopper flask, instead they remove it from the hood, walk across the room then pour it in, one of them stupidly smells the shit saying "lol that smells weird"
>start to panic myself, that shit ain't good yo!
>they pour it into their mixture, we were supposed to heat it or something
>same ding dongs boil the mixture, you were never supposed to boil it fucktards just heat it!
>billowing clouds of brown gas fill their local vicinity
>fire alarms go off
>lab gets soaked in water and bromo gas shit
>teacher comes back from piss break, flips the fuck out
>EVERYONE OUT
>fire department and hazmat comes
>cleans out place
>a week later theres a massive brown-black stain on the ceiling

then there was the mercury incident a month after that which involved them dropping a mercury thermometer because those were the old ones that could hit 400 degrees C in the lab and they dropped one then they started playing with the mercury and just dumped the glass in the trash can, not the glass-trash, not the mercury spill kit trash, just the fucking trash

>feared for my health and well being, advised teacher I didn't feel safe with their performance
>neither of those two dingdongs showed up ever again after that

[Anonymous No.5558726]

>>5558687
Wow, pure idiots. I feel sad for you.
What for did you need methylbromide solution?
It's toxic yes (neurotoxic) but not like diazomethane or dimethylsulphate for example. You can smell it, nothing bad. Well, a cloud of it IS bad.
Brown gas was bromine I suppose?

[Anonymous No.5558734]

>Gen Chem 1
>kid spills nitric acid on himself
>yellow spot on his finger where it landed
>his skin has been peeling away on that spot for weeks

I don't remember the concentration but it wasn't that high.

[Anonymous No.5558741]

This sounds like a Beavis and Butthead episode...

[Anonymous No.5558744]

Isn't bromo-methane a carcinogen? Anyway, the worst shit we had to deal with in undergrad organic chem up here in canada was benzene and concentrated ammonium, our lab coordinators use "green chemicals".

[Anonymous No.5558746]

> third lab of the year for gemchem 1
> doing titration, easy as fuck, right?
> WRONG
> kid drops HCl on his arm
> decides that it hurts and that he should lick it off
> licks it off
> mfw i don't even have a face for this

[Anonymous No.5558753]

>Make some corrosive acid in beginning Chemistry lab
>Pour it down sink instead of hood "lol idc i mixed it with water
>Permanent rust splotches for rest of semester in sink

[Illusion Alchemist No.5558763]

>>Organic Chem. lab
>>Students synthesising Anthraquinone
>>One of them poured Anthracene and other the ingridients then heat it.
>>His solution var green - blue
>> Meanwhile teacher enters and see the color of the solution .
>>Teacher worry about color and took it and leaves the lab
>>After a while teachers comes in , pissed of , yelling everyone.
>>mfw the chemical that Anthracene was not Anthracene but hydrogen cyanaide
>>mfw the company that our school buy chemicals from has mistakenly poured wrong chemicals to wrong bottles
>>mfw there could be a massacre

[Anonymous No.5558766]

>>5558746
lol, I have lost hope...

[Anonymous No.5558788]

>>5558763
Bullshit, take a look at the boiling points of the substances under consideration and the entire story falls apart.

Obvious troll might go on to plead lack of facility with English to change the meaning of statements already made.

[Anonymous No.5558790]

>>5558763
I think you used moderately diluted H2SO4 + K2Cr2O7 for antracene oxidation to antraquinone. HCN from KCN quickly oxidized in this mix in solution so it just didn't have time to escape as a gas.. But if someone wouldn't put K2Cr2O7 but only H2SO4... It would be fun.
What quantities of starting antracene are we speaking? Very approximately.

[Illusion Alchemist No.5558795]

>>5558790
i cant remember that but it was like 100 -150 ml

[Anonymous No.5558809]

>>5558795
100 -150 ml of solution?
Then about 5-10g of "antracene". Nice.

[Anonymous No.5558833]

>>5558734
>be dumb, weird high school sophomore
>taking chemistry
>believe I have enough expertise in chemistry to make nitroglycerin
>look online how to do it
>Figure out I need nitric acid
>chem teacher lazy, and doesn't lock chem lab or chemicals
>go in chem lab when no one is around
>find 1L bottle of 70% nitric acid under sink
>take 1L bottle of Nitric acid and put it in my backpack with no padding
>take public bus home
>read warnings seems a little scary, so don't open it and put it in my closet
>forget about it.
>8 months later day find its
>Asks where I got it.
>say interent
>he believes me.
>takes it and puts it in garage
>we move, and we don't remember where it ended up.

[Anonymous No.5558895]

>>5558833
>go in chem lab when no one is around
>find 1L bottle of 70% nitric acid under sink
>take 1L bottle of Nitric acid and put it in my backpack with no padding
>take public bus home
Also you should always carry with you small empty bottles with good stoppers and some plastic spoons. You never know what chemical you'll run into and often there's no way to take a whole bottle/jar. I acquired several tens of gramms of all three isomeric mononitroanilines that way.

[Anonymous No.5558921]

>org synthesis 101 lab work
>we need to react a -COOH group with an alcohol IIRC (pentanol?)
>teacher set up three methods we can pick and choose from beforehand
>one of them is using a -COOCl group instead of -COOH
>it speeds up the kinetics by a lot, this one distracted guy wants to try it
>I can see from a mile away that the regular method takes longer but is way easier to handle
>Reflux setup with a side neck that allows you to add R-COOCl dropwise with a little faucet thing
>He adds the R-COOCl to the storage compartment, but forgot to check the faucet thingie
>its set to compeltely open
>all the R-COOCl gets added at once, we hear a slight poof sound and instantly his entire inside of the reflux is coated in a white condensation or powder it was hard to tell
>Guy goes 'oops' as we collectively facepalm and he is able to scrape off some product and call it a day
>At least he's not that dumb that he sealed his reflux cooler with a rubber stop and thermometer like I've seen some people do, which would have meant shattered glasswork

>Later we are cleaning our glasswork, we have water acetone and ethanol for cleaning
>Its normal protocol to wash with water and then ethanol
>mfw he washes the R-COOCl container compartment with ethanol
>mfw as I said before this stuff reacts with alcohols
>mfw it makes another poof cloud of white stuff covers him and his face
>mfw oops
>this shit is like straight from a slapstick movie
>luckily none of the chemicals were super dangerous and none of us had any health repercussions to my knowledge

[Anonymous No.5558937]

>>5558921
should I post more?

[Anonymous No.5558971]

>>5558937
rokay

[Anonymous No.5559015]

>>5558921
>-COOCl
-COCl, m8

[Anonymous No.5559023]

>>5559015
whoops, its been a while, that makes so much fucking sense.

[Anonymous No.5559027]

>>5558833
>>5558895
>stealing
You guys are so bad! I bet you smoke cigarettes and make out with girls and stuff too!

[Anonymous No.5559046]

>>5558753
why are the sinks not ceramic?

who built that fucking place?

[Anonymous No.5559061]

>first day of gen chem lab
>guy decides he wants to smell a high concentrated ammonia solution
>he draws the most disgusted face ever and faints

He later repated it with formic acid, his fucking skin pealed off on his nose.

>third day of org chem 2 lab
>girl opens pressurised AlCl3 in Et2O container outside of her fume hood, while she had her glasses on top of her head instead of on her nose
>AlCl3 sprays everywhere, including into her eyes
>the sound she made kind of reminded me of a pig squealing

>first day of anorg chem lab 2
>guy spills 150 mL of DCM into the rotavap water bath, which was heated to 40 degrees
>ERRYBODY GET THE FUCK OUT

>org chem undergrad internship
>grad student opens pressurised bottle of BBr3 in lab next to mine, sprays everywhere, he runs for the shower in the hallway
>giant cloud of HBr in the hallway
>alarm sounds, everybody runs for their fucking lives

Have a few more, but can't be arsed.

>>5558687
Lol, mercury thing also happened in our org chem lab too.

[Anonymous No.5559080]

>>5559061
>>AlCl3 sprays everywhere, including into her eyes
I hope her eyes are ok...

>guy spills 150 mL of DCM into the rotavap water bath, which was heated to 40 degrees
>ERRYBODY GET THE FUCK OUT
Why? It's not toxic. You all could just step aside untill it stops boiling then poor into some big dish.

[Anonymous No.5559095]

>>5559080
Her eyes recovered 100%.

DCM is slightly toxic and it's a carcinogen in animals.

[Anonymous No.5559097]

never had chem class in highschool

>be in biology class
>take measuring syringe
>fill with water
>spray on the back of someones head
>funny

the end.

[Anonymous No.5559124]

>>5559097
>highschool

Anyways
>anorg II
>easy work, we chatter, our teacher is reading lab reports
>we are to dry our product
>student decides to speed it up
>turns bunsen on, puts in under a heating pad, puts an hour glass with product on it
>massive white clouds as god knows what starts evaporating and then desublimes over his head
>shoos as to stay quiet as he wants to fix it
>we shut up
>teacher finally looks up to see why it is so quiet
He done goofd.

Other time, same person
>anorg I
>basic test-tube experiments with acids and copper(II) salts or whatever
>he decides he wants to see what will happen when he puts all the acids together
>puts the Cu in
>exothermic reaction, bubbles pouring from the top
>he lets go, test-tube shatters on table


I stayed the fuck away form him in org I, he never got to org II

[Anonymous No.5559134]

>>5559124
Other student
>went to business high school
>for some godforsaken reason went to chemical school
>knew literally nothing about chem
>tried hard, but she errord in a funny way from time to time
I was next to her in anorg I lab, tried to help her because she was nice.
>one time
>we're supposed to heat something with a bunsen
>we have asbestos interwoven with iron grid so the fire is not as direct
>the grid needs to be supported by an iron ring on a holder
>she uses a rubber filtration ring instead

Short while later, I wonder what smells so bad.

[Anonymous No.5559151]

Some chemistry course decades ago:
>teacher uses non-fireproof glassware to demonstrate the flammability of alcohols
>glassware shatters
>sheets of blue and nearly invisible flames wash over the desk and the desks of a couple of students whose desks have been pushed next to his
>stuff catches on fire

>same teacher demonstrates catalysis
>unnamed liquid in a large bowl
>teacher literally throws the solid catalyst in
>cloud of steam shoots out of the bowl, hits the ceiling and starts spreading
>as the steam starts to reach our heads, the teacher says the reaction produces "some amount of cyanide"
>a few students run to open the windows and then run out like everyone else has already done

>same teacher
>"I decided to give you a real treat and made some..."
>at this point, the door between the classroom and the lab is blown into the classroom and a loud boom and the tinkle of breaking glassware is heard, and felt
>everyone vacates the premises
>the teacher had made some explosive that is sensitive when dry

In the end, everyone got an F from the course, because no one could focus on anything taught because of the dread of what the teacher would come up with next.

There were working fume hoods and other equipment, but the teacher seemed to never use the fume hoods and always grab whatever glassware was handy at the moment.

[Anonymous No.5559155]

>me in anorg lab
>fastly done planned reactions
>teacher doesn't looking
>making a little HCN just to smell it, smells good >making amylnitrite, produces proper effects but the stench is horrible 'cause we didn't have ice
>making NI3 on filter paper, quite loud poof
>What's that noise? What are you doing??
>Nothing [poker face]
>bazinga!

[Anonymous No.5559186]

>>5558726
If I remember right I think we were making some sort of crystals or something I think it might have been a diels alder reaction or cinnamic acid crystal I can't remember

yea and the brown gas was the methyl bromine

[Anonymous No.5559189]

>>5558744
>use green chemicals

oh god we did a lab with a shit ton of bleach, must have been a good half liter of it, we were heating it to distill some product from it and every time you opened the round bottom flask to put some acid or what ever in it spewed bleach smell and I could feel it run up my nose from a good 10 feet away

[Anonymous No.5559193]

>be in orgo chem
>need to make 6M Sodium Hydroxide to reaction later in the week
>teacher warns that adding solid NaOH is exothermic and will boil the water quickly if you add too much at a time
>it was like 100 something + grams of NaOH
>takes forever to dissolve it all, we needed to make a liter, takes like a half hour to get it all in
>look across room
>some kid was stirring the ENTIRE fucking batch of the 6M HCl equivalent into the water
>water boils instantly
>kid gets scarred, just weakly walks backwards and around the counter
>mixture continues to boil vigorously, soon massive clouds of steam and predissovled HCl billowing from the 1000mL beaker
>mixture boils over
>aqueous HCl runs across counter touching his notebook and some other rubber covered round bottom flask holder
>notebook turned black, rubber on rubber holder melted and burned, then rusted the heavy steel under it

[Anonymous No.5559198]

>be orgo chem
>some dingdong across the lab bench is heating something on a sand heater under the hood
>notice that he plugged his flask for proper storage but forgot to take it off when heating
>uhh, bro you gotta take that off
>he turns his head towards me
>take what off anon?
>BOOM, glass explodes, shard of glass hits him in the neck when he turned towards me
>missed his juggular or what ever that really important vein is called, lived without bleeding out

[Anonymous No.5559199]

This just reminds how bad I am at every chem lab

[Anonymous No.5559203]

>doing an intro bio course years ago
>basic electrophoresis
>some bitch spills Ethidium bromide all over her hands
>"lol i'll just wipe it off on my labcoat"
>ask her if she know its a carcinogen
>"lol whats that mean"
>It causes cancer
>bitch goes white as a sheet
She went into shock, it was funny as shit. Like she thought she was going to explode into tumors right there.

Turns out its probably not that dangerous after all but at the time it was believed to be serious shit.

[Anonymous No.5559204]

>>5559199
oh god that reminds me when we were making some diels alder reaction crystals or something and we calculated that if we had X grams of this shit and X grams of that shit that we could ONLY possibly make so much of Y shit

ended up making like 10 grams more than I was supposed to after filtration and separation. I listed it in the lab report under error report as "contamination of chemicals and poor technique"

get it back a week later, teacher wrote on the top of the entire thing

>Error report: No one makes 10 more grams of product than anticipated, thats like 40% error from the theoretical, thats ridiculous anon, follow the instructions.

[Anonymous No.5559206]

>>5559204
olawd I hate when my professors used to rip into me

[Anonymous No.5559209]

>>5559206
I questioned her afterward and she cut me off with "ITS A THEORETICAL OUTCOME, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO MAKE LESS THAN ANTICIPATED, NOT MORE, you put too much chemicals of each to make this much you reported even though you said you only put in x grams of this and that"

needless to say, I was completely wrong and only being smug as fuck

[Anonymous No.5559212]

>>5559193
>HCl
doesn't seem right
maybe it was H2SO4?

[Anonymous No.5559214]

>orgo 1 and 2
>prof requires a full precedure typed out BEFORE you get to lab and start working
>even then nobody has any idea what the fuck is going on half the time
>people just mill about the lab watching me or the one other guy who knows what to do
>every five seconds you hear shit like "so to dry the liquid, you add.... what again?" And "I made a procedure but I want to be sure it said add 5mL of whatever. 5mL is like... how much?"

Fucking love chem labs though. I could work in there for hours.

[Anonymous No.5559233]

>>5559151
Jesus Christ, how did this guy keep his job?

[Anonymous No.5559253]

I have one from some time ago, back when I was still in high school.
>today's class was about radioactivity, our teacher brought a Geiger counter to demonstrate it
>our school had, of course, a small supply of radioactive elements like uranium
>teacher switches on the Geiger counter
>the thing starts to tick with a relatively short interval
>teacher is surprised, mutters something about the thing being broken
>notices the ticking frequency slightly increases when he points the thing at the ground
>he kneels under his desk
>apparently, he lost a uranium pellet during a previous class, and the thing rolled under his desk

[Anonymous No.5559263]

>>5559233
Bureaucratic inertia.
It's not like we didn't try to get rid of him, but guess how credible those stories sound to people who never experienced them?
Everyone got branded as troublemakers for our trouble.
I remember being interested in chemistry before then, but in the three decades since, I never went to another chemistry course.

And I know the old bastard is still there, terrorizing new generations of students.

[Anonymous No.5559271]

>2013

>not making NI3 paste and putting small blobs of it under glassware for the lab monkeys to find later.

[Anonymous No.5559369]

>>5559271
Obviously you've never had your own glassware. It's beautiful, expensive and its an unfunny real sorrow when something happens, like 3-necked rb simax flask looses one neck for example.

[Anonymous No.5559386]

Alright i have one.

>doing chemistry at college
>chemistry teacher is a freakin university professor who took a job here because it was closer to his home
>decides we will do fun experiments because no fucks given
>decides we shall produce benzoic acid
>have to reflux to produce sodium benzoate
>do my homework and learn it is an excellent anti fungal
>Reflux exp starts
>learn that reflux reaction produces gas as a byproduct and this is cooled by water flow until it condenses.
>mentally associate that the Bunsen temperature relates to -> rate of reaction -> gas pressure -> the glass bung springing off the top and shattering
>turn down temperature
>lab partner turns it back up and says that all familiar
>buthowwillwefinishtheexperimentontime?
>nope.jpg
>turn the temperature down
>inform the table across from me filled with black girls
>dont feel like giving people advice anymore
>wait for 9 gun salute as the glass bungs launch off the reflux and hit the ground
>ugha, bad smell, bad smell everywhere
>except by me
>only one with enough of the byproduct to allow for further mistakes in the next reaction phase

[Anonymous No.5559401]

>>5559204
Learning Chemistry in the US must be very different than the UK... assuming your from the US.

I can barely understand what it is your saying. This is college level, not uni, right?

[Anonymous No.5559458]

>>5559386
I'm as an organic chemist understood no more than half of this manuscript of yours.
>reflux reaction produces gas as a byproduct and this is cooled by water flow until it condenses
maybe you're talking about solvent boiling and returning it to the reaction mix?
>the glass bung springing off the top
wut? what glass? why did it fall? because of pressure inside? if so why did you close it? was it a reflux condenser? if so why wasn't it grabed properly?
>turn down temperature
why? because you lose a condenser?
>9 gun salute
everybody are idiots?
>glass bungs launch off the reflux
>glass bungs
what is it?? draw it at least.
>enough of the byproduct
where from?
captcha: Eryeedi Imbecile

[Anonymous No.5559461]

>>5559458
>organic chemist
>doesnt even know what a glass bung is


Get you out of here you fucking pleb

[Anonymous No.5559463]

>>5559461
glass stopper!

[Anonymous No.5559485]

>makes a joke about gassing the jews
>puts his mouth directly on the gas outlet
>quickly opens it completely
>takes a deep breath
>coughs miserably
>"I had no idea I couldn't breathe it."

[Anonymous No.5559486]

Work at biotech company and got yelled at for drinking from the DI water faucets.

[Anonymous No.5559502]

>>5559151
>junior year high school, chem class
>first week/month or some shit, real early in the year
>chem teacher was total bro, young, <30
>shows us examples of crazy chemistry shit
>drops a styrofoam cup in a thing of acid
>sprays alcohol all over his desk then lights it
>dancing blue waves all over
Shit was fucking cool
>mfw he showed us how to make smokebombs

[Anonymous No.5559518]

> in lab late last night
> Also a little high
> alone
> Thisisabadidea.com
> Spend about an hour trying to measure reagents
> Can't concentrate
> Decide to take a break but wander over to chem cabinet
> See ancient bottle of Conc HCl. The plastic is blistering.
> "Obviously I should dispose of this dangerous piece of chem"
>Set Ehrlenmyer in sink.
> Can't remember if it is never add acid to base or base to acid.
> Thinking hard, think it must be never add base to acid.
> So I swirl a bit of Na2CO3 and endeavor to pour a lil bit of unknown conc. HCl
> a whole lot pours out
> Instant boiling startles me, I jerk hand away and to the right
> globular HCl splashes on floor behind me
> Check self, I am completely dry
> Floor bubbling and melting
> Frantically prepare container of dissolved Na2CO3
> Pour it all over floor
> Cl2 gas evolves, stinging eyes nose and throat
> Party's over, no longer high
> Youwillbeexpelled.jpg
> Spend next 1/2 hour neutralizing HCl droplets and mopping floor
> Never getting high in lab ever again
> Notevenonce.dwg

[Anonymous No.5559537]

>>5559212
might have been, I can't remember all the chemicals from the story

[Anonymous No.5559545]

>>5559518
That's why weed is bad. Drink in the lab instead.
>Cl2 gas evolves
No, CO2 carrying HCl with it.

[Anonymous No.5559558]

>>5559401
it was basic high school

you can calculate how much product you can make with given materials and thats how we formulated a theoretical yield, that in the most ideal circumstances with no loss, issues and with exact measuring thats the amount you can make

but because we're humans we never do, you're supposed to make less because of errors, or more if you put in too much of a substance

[Anonymous No.5559582]

>>5559545
Go to chem labs sober, get drink/smoke for physics labs. Not being a fucking klutz helps.

[Anonymous No.5559764]

for some unknown universal law, all org chem proffessors I ever had were awesomely chill people

this one guy loved to tell anecdotes, two of them I remember

>His daughter called him once that she was currently in a minor railroad accident and that the rumor was that the other train was a freight train also carrying a load of Cl2
>"dont worry daughter, you dont seem to be dead yet so it means that even if Cl2 was leaked it was such a small amount it doesnt matter"
>"thanks for conforting me dad...."

>His son is like still a kid and its just before the first year of going to school or something, he has these slippers with an R and an L on them but he occasionally puts them on incorrectly and struggles with the difference between right and left
>He examines the slippers, and they are identical, so he throws them out and buys a pair that the slippers only fit on the correct foot
>a few days later his son is looking at himself in the mirror
>"hey dad look when I love my left foot, my image moves his right foot"
>Wife, come quick! our son just learned the meaning of chirality!
>*cue collective "awwww" throughout the lecture hall*

[Anonymous No.5559828]

>Gen lab 1
>Using compressed HCl gas from a cylinder
>Some idiot changes the "l" on the cylinder to "N" as a joke
>later someone knocks over the cylinder by accident and there's an audible hiss as some gas escapes out the hose
>Professor runs over and sees what's on the label and starts screaming for everybody to leave

When they let us back in once the guy fessed up to messing with the label, my titrant had been contaminated (I was right next to the gas) and I had to start over. Shit sucked.