There are things you wouldn't believe that go on in a chemistry lab, perpetrated by highly qualified graduates too. This is the stuff of the Dick of the Day award mentioned last time.
The reaction that crawled out of the pot on its own was, of course, one of mine, but there were others. Like spending all might isolating a product by column chromatography only for it to go off. Like the reaction that went from clear to yellow to green to blue and, finally, black. Like incinerating the floor next to my bench when a tin of sodium hydride caught fire (I was banished to the chemistry library for weeks for that one)...
My friend Phil Thomas (he of the long walk from Grantham) was once pressurising a massive chromatograohy column, known as the Drainpipe, which contained kilos of silica and litres of solvent, and he forgot to open the tap...Bang! The thing sheared in two with a mighty crack and dumping of its contents. He did this with a smaller one, too, where the pieces of flying glass miraculously missed everyone. He also once spent all night in the lab, where he was still there at 4am when the security man came round, and went to sleep between the bookcases in the library.
Pete Amos, a newcomer when I was in my last year, got off to a bad start when, on the very first day when he introduced himself, he sat on the end of my bench - always a bad idea with chemicals around - and broke some NMR tubes with samples in them soneone else had left for me to analyse. This had to be the fastest winner of Dick of the Day. Yes, he fitted right in!
Andy Hobbs once lovingly isolated the wrong product because he'd forgotten to scrub the acetone out of the acetylene he was using, and set light to a pyrophoric lithium compound on the balance - crimson flames licked at the ceiling tiles.
The fun just continued...
Next time, more cock-ups, fires etc.
Jack Orchison
June 16, 2014.
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