## 3. CHEMISTRY

#### Subsections

- 3. chemistry - general
- 3.1 chemistry poetry
- 3.2 chemistry quotes
- 3.3 chemical puns
- 3.4 in the lab
- 3.5 chemical dictionary
- 3.6 chemists
- 3.7 elements
- 3.8 H20

### 3.4 IN THE LAB

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chemistry
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    From:         "G.P." <G_Popper@Hotmail.Com>
    Special Category: Top Reasons

#### Top Ten ways to get thrown out of chemistry lab

- 10. Pretend an electron got stuck in your ear, and insist on describing the sound to others.
- 9. Give a cup of liquid nitrogen to a classmate and ask, "Does this taste funny to you?"
- 8. Consistently write three atoms of potassium as "KKK."
- 7. Mutter repeatedly, "Not again... not again... not again."
- 6. When it's very quiet, suddenly cry out, "My eyes!"
- 5. Deny the existence of chemicals.
- 4. Begin pronouncing everything your immigrant lab instructor says exactly the way he/she says it.
- 3. Casually walk to the front of the room and urinate in a beaker.
- 2. Pop a paper bag at the crucial moment when the professor is about to pour the sulfuric acid
- 1. Show up with a 55-gallon drum of fertilizer and express an interest in federal buildings.

chemistry
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    Health Watch: The graduate student's guide to self-diagnosis and treatment.
    (The 3 a.m. version)

    It is not unusual for a grad student to feel strains and stresses in the
    body during late night lab marathons.  In spite of this fact, there is an
    appalling shortage of health clinics open at the hour that these symptoms
    usually begin to manifest.  In recognition of this deficiency, this
    `how-to' list has been compiled to aid the graduate student in this time of
    need.

    Symptom         Probable cause               Treatment(*)
    =======         ==============               =========

    Aching legs     Frequent trips to            Move the equipment into
                    not-so-near neighbouring     the lab you are working
                    labs to use equipments not   in.  Those with a sense of
                    found in your own.           humor can try asking their
                                                 P.I.'s to buy them their
                                                 own equipment.

    Burning         Eyeballs attempting to       Confine all gel destaining
    sensation in    crawl out of your sockets    practices to your boss's
    eyes            in a bid to escape chronic   office. (Fumehood?!  We
                    exposure to acetic           don't need no stinkin'
                    acid/methanol vapours that   fumehood!)
                    have equilibrated with the
                    lab's already volatile
                    atmosphere.

    Inability to    Neck injury incurred while   Accept as a fact that the
    turn head       trying to simultaneously     moment your back is
                    watch column not run dry     turned, the column will
                    while playing ``Cat          run dry on you anyway.
                    Shaver'' on the computer.    Enjoy your game.

    Burning         Unsafe use of ethanol        Visit your local burger
    sensation on    during flame                 joint and beg for a
    head (usually   sterilization.               hairnet donation.  (This
    preceded by                                  presumes that you don't
    the crisp                                    work there part-time to
    scent of                                     make up the balance of
    melting hair)                                your salary, in which case
                                                 you should already have
                                                 your own hairnet.)

    Lightheaded     Sleep deprivation.           Practice performing simple
    giddiness                                    lab techniques while
                                                 sleeping.  You can pipett
                                                 water instead of chemical
                                                 to start with.  Soon you
                                                 will find yourself able t
                                                 catch up on your sleep
                                                 while doing that
                                                 all-important mini-prep o
                                                 western blot!  (This
                                                 suggestion strongly
                                                 endorsed by the
                                                 inexhaustable Dr. Kay.)

    Lower back      Centrifuge rotors            Take sample with you on
    pain                                         any one of the numerous
                                                 spinning rides at the
                                                 amusement park and hold
                                                 the tube away from the
                                                 center of rotation as far
                                                 as possible.  Ride for 3
                                                 hours or until nausea
                                                 ensues.

    (*)Suitable replacement for all suggested treatments is to go home already!

chemistry
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    From:         "THE BIG PIG" <kcds1@Juno.com>
    Q: What's the most important thing to learn in chemistry?
    A: Never lick the spoon.

chemistry
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    From: kkociba@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Keith J Kociba)

    Chemists are the *cleanest* people you'll ever meet...
    they wash their hands even *before* they go to the restroom!

chemistry
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    From: jpauer@mtu.edu (JAMES PAUER)

    First law of Laboratorics: Hot glass and cold glass look alike!

chemistry
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    From: MOHAMMED CHUNGGAZE <m.chunggaze@ic.ac.uk>
    I was helping out in a first year undergraduate practical class when i came
    across a girl who i thought maybe washing Potassium Bromide plates under the
    tap. i said to her

    'i hope you are not washing those plates under the tap'

    she replied:  'NO..i,m using distilled water' !!!!

chemistry
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    From: "Opel, Kerry" <kopel@y-city.net>
    In chemistry lab, one of my students accidentally hooked up her bunsen
    burner to the water line instead of the gas line.  She didn't realize it,
    of course, until she turned it on.

chemistry
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    From: Hmiddstaf@aol.com
    During grammar school science experiements into properties of different
    alcohols:

    The residue of each test was tipped down the sinks, which were grouped in
    threes.  There were no U-bends, but each group of sinks emptied into a single
    box, which overflowed into the mains sewers.  Presumably this was intended to
    retain things like droplets of mercury, which was not banned from use when I
    was 16.

    During the session, my bunsen went out, so I re-lit it with a splint lit from
    the teacher's bunsen.  For safety's sake (!) I dropped the burning splint
    into the sink, intending to extinguish it with water, instead of waving it
    around in the alcohol fumes.  A small blue flame disappeared down the
    plughole.  Hum, thinks I, I wonder where that's going?

    I opened the cupboard 'neath the sink, only to find the drain box, full of
    alcohol, a roaring mass of flame.  Shutting the doors, I called out, "Er,
    Sir..." just as the inch-thick wooden lids blew off the adjacent un-used
    sinks.  Fortunately, the back-blast extinguished the flames under the
    cupboard, so the box only sagged slightly!

chemistry
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    From: ol3@webtv.net (Oscar Lanzi III)

    Proof that chemistry and computer programming should never be mixed

    When I was in grad school, a classmate and I decided that a very dirty
    computer keyboard needed cleaning.  We figured that water would be
    dangerous to the electical circuitry, so we elected to clean the
    keyboard with acetone.

    We were right; the electrical circuitry survived just fine.  However,
    ..

    The keyboard never had to be cleaned again.

chemistry
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    From: "Pavel Goudochnikov" <ear9pg@leeds.ac.uk>

    I've had my fair share of lab disasters, most of them fairly
    unimpressive. The one I am about to describe though was quality. I swear to
    God, this is a true story.

    We had a monday afternoon double hour and a half practical. On this
    particular occasion we were oxidizing ethanol to ethanoic acid. If I
    remember rightly you reflux it for twenty minutes with dilute HCl to get it
    to go to an aldehyde and then bash it with conc. sulphuric and sodium
    dichromate for another twenty minutes to make it go the rest of the way.

    Anyhow, there I was carefully following the instructions in the textbook. I
    got as far as the aldehyde. At this point the book said "Add 5g [or
    something like that] of Na2Cr2O7." I did that. Then it said "Now using a
    dropper pippette add 10ml of conc. sulphuric acid..." I did that. Then I
    read the rest of the line, and it said: "CAREFULLY, drop by drop over 10
    minutes." I lifted my heead to see evil looking bubbles spewing forth from
    my pear-shaped flask beneath a growing tower of thick orange fumes. It
    looked like something off the set for Jeckyll and Hyde. I have to confess,
    I was quite pleased with myself.

chemistry
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    From: Dixon-Jackson Kevin LE GB <kevin.dixon-jackson@cibasc.com>

    One of my fun moments was during Organic Spot Tests.
    Following sodium fusion (one of the most lethal lab procedures known to man)
    the young Prof asked a struggling student
    "Have you found anything yet?"
    Glamorous student "Erm... er...I...er... Its nearly Chlorine!"
    Prof "Don't be silly. It can't be NEARLY chlorine, that's like
    being...being... nearly pregnant, you can't be nearly pregnant!"
    Glamorous One "You don't get around much, do you!"
    Muffled sniggers all round.

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    From: "Lotorto" <lotorto@ptd.net>

    I must say, the hardest I have ever laughed was in honors chem class in
    10th grade during a lab...

    I will start by telling you that my high school chem lab is probably one of
    the oldest and worn out rooms that have ever existed...I say this because
    if it was any older it would have fallen apart....and my chemistry teacher
    wasn't much younger than the room either.

    So we were progressing on a lab which consisted of determining the specifc
    heat of aluminum and we were using the ancient sinks that were fixed in the
    room. There was this kid in my class, a genius, who was the funniest
    looking kid I've ever seen...he had a thick unibrow and he was really
    hairy...but anyways...we were using the sinks to fill beakers of
    water...and the kid was at one of the sinks that were a little
    "leaky". Every time you used it, it would spray out the side a little. Well
    I guess this time it sprayed a little more than usual and the kid thought
    that he should fix it instead of just using a different sink. He turned the
    base of the sink thinking that he would tighten it...instead it started to
    spray out more. Meanwhile my chem teacher, a silly old lady, yelled
    "Steven! turn the sink off! Its making a mess!" And so Steven, the kid,
    turned the base of the faucet back to how it was and it broke off in his
    hand. I looked over from across the room after I had heard the following:
    SNAP..."Steven! What did you do?!"..."Oh crap!"...SPLAAASH...

    Our chem room was temporarily turned into a water park...in place of where
    the sink was...there was now a large column of water shooting through the
    ceiling and spraying all over the entire room...the water was getting all
    over the hot plates that we were using in the lab and steam was rising all
    over the place...everyone ran back to our math class in a comical
    panic....and then five minutes later after we had told the story to
    everyone...my chem teacher came into the room soaking wet and with the
    funniest look in her eye....she looked at Steven through her crooked
    glasses and said "STEVEN? WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE SINK?"

    That was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

New after last time posted (February 28, 2004) chemistry
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    From: "Katrien De Gusseme" <katriendegusseme@hotmail.com>

    When I was studying for chemical engineer in Ghent (Belgium), we had a lot
    of Chinese PhD students. One of them was assisting in lab excersise we had
    with the topic destillation. The prof actually did all the explanation on
    how to operate the destillation column and the PhD student would assist
    with the analytical part.

    All went well (except maybe for the part where I burned my fingertips when
    trying to take a sample from the top plate) en we headed upstairs where the
    gaschromatograph was located. The PhD student listend to us explaining what
    we want to analyse and all the time he was nodding his head and saying
    "yes, yes, of course". Then he took our samples and disappeared. We waited
    some minutes, then heard him say 'oh shit'.

    The next thing we hear is the door being locked... nothing happens for
    about an hour, then the guy returns and hands uf a few sheets with graphs
    and numbers.

    "No problems" he says and disappears again. We've never seen him again.....

New after last time posted (February 28, 2004) chemistry
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    From: "Katrien De Gusseme" <katriendegusseme@hotmail.com>

                                 Size does matter.

    In my last year of chemical engineering we had a lab of analytical
    techniques. Now, both my lab partner and I are very tall (I'm a woman and
    1m80 tall, my lab partner is a 1m95 tall guy), and our lab assistant was a
    woman of about 1m50. After the second class, she would bring a stool to
    stand on whenever talking to us.

next page | Index | Comments and Contributions

#### Subsections

- 3. chemistry - general
- 3.1 chemistry poetry
- 3.2 chemistry quotes
- 3.3 chemical puns
- 3.4 in the lab
- 3.5 chemical dictionary
- 3.6 chemists
- 3.7 elements
- 3.8 H20

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