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Chemistry lab mishaps

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samiHere

Fri Aug 13 2010, 01:01AM

Registered Member #3110 Joined: Fri Aug 13 2010, 12:31AM
Location:
Posts: 5

I once had hazmat called to my home after telling my chemistry teacher that not only did I have experience with chlorine gas, but had made some in the woods behind my house and kept it in glass sealed jars. They came, they took it, and for the rest of high school I became mad scientist boy. (and yes, I know now that it isnt good to put chlorine gas in anything but a sealed metal canister).... I did however enjoy how it spilled over the container when you lifted the lid. Newspaper said I was mixing fertilizers to make a bomb, and the fire cheif called my copper sulfate carbon sulfate. I never really respected the intellegence of any of the people involved from that point on.

Chris Russell

Sun Aug 15 2010, 08:56PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

I've cleared out the off-topic posts and unlocked the thread, by request.

This thread is for the discussion of mishaps around the lab, and how to prevent them. Discussion of the legal and political aspects of incident reporting should go in a different thread. Please keep on-topic so that this thread can be of use to others.

GluD

Sun Aug 15 2010, 09:39PM

Registered Member #1221 Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196

I once had a borosilicate glass beaker "blow up" on an electric stove. I was trying to dry some copper acetate and I hadnt bothered to make a water bath for the beaker so it was just standing there.. it went allright for a while so i went upstairs. Then suddenly the electricity went out.

Got fairly suprised when i came down, there was glass shards spread out over a square meter aera, it looked like it had been fairly violent, of course the solution shorted out the stove and caused the alert but that doesnt explain the violent shattering of glass.

I guess the sort of moral (theres always one...) is dont trust your glass, even if its proper lab stuff, use a water bath.

Martin King

Sun Aug 15 2010, 10:05PM

Registered Member #3040 Joined: Tue Jul 27 2010, 03:15PM
Location: South of London. UK
Posts: 237

Two mishaps I remember from school were :-

The experiment where you get a large tin with a press-on lid (e.g a coffee tin) and punch a small hole in the base and lid. Then you fill it with gas, put the lid on and light it. When the gas air mixture reaches the point where it's explosive then the lid flies of with a loud bang. It's generally a good idea to do this outdoors but if you're going to do it indoors make sure you're not doing it right underneath a fluorescent light fitting

Next one was the headmaster (who was also a chemistry/physics teacher) demonstrating the cooling curve of naphthalene. Unfortunately the test tube cracked and caught fire. For some bizarre reason he grabbed hold of it, rapidly threw it in the sink and then ran out of the room. Being school kids we of course laughed our heads off but we didn't see him in school for a couple of days and when we did his hand was bandaged so I guess the burns must have been quite bad

.

Martin.

Grant

Wed Sept 08 2010, 11:50PM

Registered Member #7 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 04:32AM
Location: Central Florida
Posts: 18

"On Jan. 7, 2010, Texas Tech University (TTU) graduate student Preston Brown was working with another graduate student to synthesize and characterize an energetic material, most likely nickel hydrazine perchlorate. Despite being told by their adviser, chemistry professor Louisa J. Hope-Weeks, to make no more than 100 mg of the material, the students synthesized 10 g."

Adam Munich

Thu Sept 09 2010, 12:25AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Wow. Luckily they weren't told how to make acetone peroxide, or they would've definitely been killed.

IntraWinding

Thu Sept 09 2010, 02:58PM

Registered Member #2261 Joined: Mon Aug 03 2009, 01:19AM
Location: London, UK
Posts: 581

OK, truly mental this one: when I was about 12 I'd somehow gotten hold of concentrated Sulphuric and Nitric acids and Toluene, so you can guess what I had a go at making! Only somehow I'd decided I was only making DNT instead of TNT so I thought perhaps a slightly higher reaction temperature might make all the difference. (Here we go): I pressed the palm of my hand over the boiling test tube to make a kind of pressure cooker and heated the tube a little more on the gas stove. Now for some reason it was only at this point that I became fearful that the glass tube might burst under pressure spraying me with extremely corrosive boiling acids and maybe setting fire to me too. Perhaps I was thinking about how unlikely it was for the stuff to detonate and that had distracted me from the real danger. Anyway, I walked over to the kitchen sink and hoping the mix had cooled sufficiently, released my palm from the top of the tube. Whoosh! The concentrated acids and molten organics mix did a classic (boiling) 'bump' and shot all over the palm of my hand. Immediately rinsing under the cold tap brought a second burn as the hot Sulphuric Acid hydrated but at least the injury was confined to my hand. My location and quick reactions had stopped the mix before it chemically burnt me, but of course, like all burns, it hurt like hell and for ages. It developed into an enormous pressurised blister larger than half a golf ball. I was too worried about trouble to tell my parents, but went to the doctors on my own for the first time in my life the next day because I was worried by the large size of the burn. I told the doctor that the bright yellow staining of my skin (Nitric Acid) was from Iodine as I imagined the truth would cause me another disaster! Just to top it off, the doctor phoned my mum to tell her I'd visited. My mum knew nothing about chemistry and full story of my stupidity never got out - until now! I'd still maintain you learn a lot from experiences like that, assuming you don't earn a Darwin Award in the process of course!

MinorityCarrier

Fri Sept 10 2010, 04:57PM

Registered Member #2123 Joined: Sat May 16 2009, 03:10AM
Location: Bend, Oregon
Posts: 312

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" - Nietzsche

Pyr0maniac

Fri Sept 10 2010, 09:57PM

Registered Member #3165 Joined: Sat Sept 04 2010, 03:24PM
Location:
Posts: 13

We've cause quite a lot of trouble at school and broken a lot of glassware, but nothing dangerous really. The most noteworthy thing i can think of was at an open day, when people were doing experiments to impress the parents. One of these was bubbling methane through washing up liquid and then setting fire to the bubbles. Somehow some guy managed to half set fire to someones afro.
My most dangerous accident was when i was electrolyzing brine to collect chlorine. I had my little cell hooked up to a car battery and i was collecting the chlorine in a 2L coke bottle. I left it fizzing away in our kitchen for half an hour or so, only to find when i went to check on it that the coke bottle had fallen over, spewing all the chlorine i had collected into the room, and allowing the new bubbles to escape. I don't think there was enough in there to do any damage, but it did stink for a while.

IntraWinding

Fri Sept 17 2010, 02:19AM

Registered Member #2261 Joined: Mon Aug 03 2009, 01:19AM
Location: London, UK
Posts: 581

MinorityCarrier wrote ...

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" - Nietzsche

Unless it makes us weaker. Not sure how he missed that bit - perhaps from repeatedly hitting himself over the head?

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