2006-09-06 09:20:45 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Chemistry
This can be almost anything: from personal/student experience (NO DRUGS) to the great events in history, like the accidental making of chocolate. (Yumm.)
2006-09-06 09:59:52 · update #1
Hmmm...there's been a lot of fun stuff...mostly dumb stuff that my students did when I was an undergraduate instructor...
(1) How about the student that sampled his laboratory synthesized benzocaine on his own tongue? He didn't get a numbing effect right away, so he kept on applying more and more benzocaine...until his mouth was completely frozen and he was drooling because he couldn't control his mouth...
(2) Or how about the student who popped the Aldrich sure seal bottle cap off of a bottle of tertiary butyl lithium (tBuLi) and then proceeded to pour 10 mL of it into a graduated cylinder? You can guess the result...
(3) Or the student who put silica gel that was soaking wet with methanol into a HOT oven...ummm, what's the flash point of methanol? Certainly less than the oven...so boom went the methanol, and silica gel covered the entire room...what a mess...
2006-09-06 09:37:45 · answer #1 · answered by The ~Muffin~ Man 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I used to be a Chem TA, so I have some pretty funny stories about undergrads not using all their brain. My favorite happened when I was TAing a lab on titration curves. The kids had some beakers with HCl and Phenolphthalein and were titrating with NaOH. They were using pH probes to take readings every so often so they could plot pH vs Volume Titrant. Everything's going along smoothly, then 2 guys call for me, "Our pH isn't changing and we've added like, 40mL." I'm sitting about 30 feet away, and I can see their beaker is bright pink, so I know they've added plenty of NaOH. I look a little closer and I see that their pH probe is still in the little bottle of buffer solution! So I tell them, then ask, "Why didn't you take the probe out of the buffer?" And they respond, "It didn't say to in the instructions!"
Man, I love undergrads!
2006-09-06 17:42:20 · answer #2 · answered by Duluth06ChE 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
well let's see i've set reactions on fire, set reagents on fire, and come out unscathed. n-butyl lithium gives off a pretty flame fyi...
2006-09-06 16:50:43 · answer #3 · answered by shiara_blade 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The making of the atomic bomb?
2006-09-06 16:27:00 · answer #4 · answered by commonsense 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋