@@aloysiuskurnia7643 Can't burn chems or the soldiers get sick, can't dump chems in the ocean or the fish die and start making the consumers sick... Can't do anything anymore these days:(
@@nikkothegoblin Thank you for your services! The electric eel clan will not forget your deeds, and rise to your aid as the tide rises beyond your feet in your biggest time of need!
I don't remember the details, but in 9th grade our chemistry classroom was completely renovated, new walls, new desks, new ceiling, everything was spotless, even a new chem-teacher. His first comment was "Hi i'm Tobias! They call this a 'chemistry lab' it is NOT, there isn't a SINGLE burn mark in the ceiling". He spent the rest of the semester trying to make as many holes as possible. After holding a balloon while talking about Helium he let a balloon go and lit the string like a fuse (most of the class takes cover, I don't, because ,duh, Helium isn't flammable) as the flame starts to lick the balloon he calmly continues "of course, as you know, this school is rather strapped for cache so we couldn't afford Helium, this is Hydrogen." I didn't have the time to cover my ears, but as it luckily was pure hydrogen the explosion was loud but not deafening. I also recall his thick perspex blast-shield that he would put around various experiments, I don't quite remember which but I do recall one with a precariously placed bunsenburner magnesum flakes and concentrated ummm Sulfuric (?) acid. That stained the ceiling..
I love how he wasn't motivated by anything like trying to make the labs interesting for the students, but instead solely by the desire to cause property damage with lasting marks lol.
Not chemistry related, but those guys cheating on the exam (2:41) reminded me of a girl in school who tried to cheat in latin. The teacher had made it easy to guess or even announced what text we would have to translate in an upcoming test, so some students used translations to prepare, some may even have secretly used them during the test. When we got the test back, the teacher praised the translation that one girl did, but ended with "she even translated the sentences I cut from the text".🤣
Regarding the accumulated mercury story: Here at the university in Karlsruhe apparently the same thing happened. Before they had gloveboxes, chemistry under inert gas was executed in boxes with the opening dumped into a bath of mercury. So you could just reach with your arms through the mercury and do your chemistry without having to worry about air contamination. So they had large quantities of mercury in the lab and any spilled mercury would just seek its ways through the cracks in the wooden floor to leave a big surprise for the construction crew, when the building was renovated eventually. I really don't envy chemists back then.
As insane as the danger is with your face presumably quite close to a pool of mercury, the actual mechanics of it are also wild. I imagine that would actually be a significant amount of force to displace enough mercury to get your hands in and manulpulate things. Plus it must be uncomfortable on your arms while you're working.
The end joke with Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Ohm is a brilliant science joke. Heard it a while ago but it's always put a smile on my face. Ohm resists XD
Story from my grandfather As a teenager , he and his hoodlum friends would steal bars of potassium from the high school lab . They would place the potassium on a small bottle of water , put the combination in a paper bag , and , lay it on the street car tracks . Of course it looked like innocuous trash until the first wheel broke the bottle and the second wheel arrived just in time for the big reaction , which was just enough to knock the streetcar off the track . My grandfather eventually retired from teaching chemistry , many decades later .
Not a chemist, but hardware engineer: That 25kgs bags remind me of my "lab" setup, where I ordered about 60kgs of different chemicals including acids, bases etc. and that came in two packages (because our postal services have limit of 30kgs per package unless it's on pallet). Of course packages often contained incompatible chemicals (eg. 35% H2O2 and pure acetone in one package lol). Of course delivery man had no PPE, neither gloves and eye protection. "Safety first". [Another package contained concentrated nitric acid (70%), con. sulfuric acid (98%) and hexamine...]
My grandfather was an engineer, he designed chemical plants and factories. When i was young he explained how they'd kick around mercury that had leaked from some machinery... On one occasion they had to run for their lives after a chlorine leak, heading upwind so the cloud wouldn't catch up. I was a kid and didn't realise how bad those things were, now i suspect his poor health was probably not only the consequence of smoking...
Early on in my phd we were doing a lot of scanning electron microscopy. The proteins we studied complexed with lipids, so we had to stain them too. For this we used osmium tetroxide (which is highly volatile, acutely poisonous, and can permanently blind you by staining your corneas black). Before teaching us how to work with it, my boss told us a story from her phd. One of her lab members had improperly stored a solution they had been using (they didn't store the container inside another container in the hood) and went home for the night. When my boss came in the next morning, the fume hood's sash was stained black. It was a huge problem to deal with that required special people to clean it up, a lot of downtime as the lab wasn't safe to enter, and was of-course quite costly. Fortunately the sash was closed, so it didn't contaminate the whole lab and nobody was injured. I always felt pretty uneasy working with the stuff and am glad that that I don't have to deal with it anymore.
@@Kualinar I think for our work it really was the best option. OTO can be nasty, but I think the purpose of that story was to scare us enough into treating it with care, which it did quite well. We never had any mishaps thankfully.
0:25 Molten magnesium. Now that’s a fun thought, actually any molten red-hot metal is. 3:19 I remember a project we had to in my freshman year. Looking at the specifications, it looked like we were supposed to program tic-tac-toe with an 8 by 6 grid. But looking at the specifications more closely, there was an “error” that made the program not work. I fixed the “error” and presented it to my professor. She said my program was wrong, and it wasn’t supposed to work. I still got high grade for it though.
@@ChemEDan I did ask her, and she said that the point was if we could properly parse and translate logical statements into code. The statement she gave was long, and there was only one operator that made it not work. I implemented the rest of the statement correctly and as intended, so maybe that’s why I still got a high grade.
In a 10th grade high school chemistry class and we were doing an experiment heating some sort of powder. I think it was something copper based? It was to show the difference in mass once we heated it up and evaporated water from it and an easily intro to the lab equipment. We’re all heating up the little burners carefully and the teacher is going around the room checking people’s stuff. There was supposed to be a color change and then we shut off the burners and weigh it. The teacher mentions this out loud while explaining. One person, with great confusion, declares, “Mine’s a liquid.” This caused our chemistry teacher to walk over and sigh before explaining that they had heated it too much.
I could see the guy with the microwave deciding ‘It’s time to retire this microwave. Let’s make a safety demonstration with it.’ -> Inset BLEVE here -> Show remains to the classes for a ‘This is what happens if you don’t use your head in labs’ demonstration.
Lead acid car batteries can form hydrogen and explode if there's also a spark (says Captain Obvious). My Dad had this happen while driving, no one was near the battery so no injuries except to the battery. This is a good reminder to wear safety glasses and follow proper procedure when jump starting. One of my coworkers had an old beater station wagon that he was using to take his kids somewhere. The kids commented that there was smoke coming from under the car. Suspecting an exhaust problem my coworker opened the windows. Then the kids commented that there were flames coming from under the car. They pulled over and got out and were watching the car burn (no cell phones yet). The kids were fascinated by the fire and kept getting closer so my coworker grabbed both of them and dragged them really far away, more as a punishment than for safety. Soon after a huge fireball erupted and engulfed the area where they were all standing, they were safe in their new location. Never underestimate the fire potential of 20 gallons of gasoline.
Be mindful of any batteries that you have, especially lipo and li-ion. I've had a few old 18650s, so I just put them in a bag with some other old batteries that my mom wanted to throw out to a designated bin at a supermarket. She was driving with them in her car for some time, and she kept on forgetting about them. A few weeks ago, she just took them out of the car and left the bag next to the thrash bins we have outside. After 2 or 3 days, a neighbour heard a loud boom and went to check what happened. Well, one of the batteries must've shorted somehow (maybe ruined insulation) and exploded, resulting in a fire of bins filled with paper and plastic, and the styrofoam insulation of the house. Like half of the wall just had a burned/melted thermal insulation. The neighbour said he doesn't remember how they got through the fence, but they managed to extinguish it.
My dad has long told this story: In the early stages of his and my mother’s relationship, my dad was an avid home brewer. With an engineering background, he had previously studied both physics and chem. However, that didn’t stop him from using concentrated acid as a method of sterilisation while wearing shorts, a shirt, no shoes and no eye protection. Turns out, one of the flexible tubes which was carrying this acid (under pressure) had a small hole from deterioration. This caused a stream of concentrated acid to spray directly into his left eye. A hospital trip and lots of recovery later, he made a partial recovery; he still had his sight, with a cloudy spot remaining over his pupil, the colour of his iris changed from a dark green to light blue (just the major issues.) I’ve grown up with the importance of PPE ingrained pretty well and I’m quite sure we have enough safety glasses/face shields now for an entire school class. He recently had a cornea transplant which removed the growing cloudy spot and improved clarity and depth perception. Nowadays, my parents have been together over 25 years (somehow) and my dad lives a relatively normal life (with regular medication and eye drops). Needless to say, the moral of the story is to always wear PPE. You never expect an accident to happen when it does. Wear safety glasses.
The disintegrating ABS probes remind me of 3D printing: When printing with ABS I use acetone (which the local hardware store fortunately sells in large amounts as paint thinner) for several different things because it also solves ("melts") ABS: I use acetone with a bit of solved ABS on the base plate of the printer to make the prints stick on glass, I use acetone basically as "glue" to make multiple pieces of ABS stick together and I use a huge pickle jar as an acetone vapor chamber to vapor smooth fresh prints that I want smoothed
When i was in high school we extracted metallic lead from something on a spoon over a Bunsen, we didn't get much lead so i grabbed my pocket knife and a sinker and shaved off some lead to add.. the teacher was amazed and made everyone in the class look at how well our experiment worked 🤣.. the teacher never figured out that something wasn't right even though we had more lead than the reagents we started with 🤣
2:20 Reminds me of the time I poisoned myself with Spic-and-span! I was mopping in my bedroom, an area in the corner that my cats like using as a litterbox when I wasn't home 🙃So maybe the ammonia in the pee reacted or something on top of everything else, idk. I filled a big bowl with a random amount of S&S (the label is INSIDE the bottle and hard to read, so I just guessed on the amount) and got to mopping. My one cat came in, and TRIED DRINKING THE SOAPY MOP WATER so I had to close my door. (Yes, he is orange.) It was December, so my windows were all shut and taped over too. Like an hour after cleaning, I start feeling very weak, fatigued and nauseous. It was super early in the morning and I hadn't slept yet, so I just thought I was crashing and went to bed. Proceeded to get woken up like an hour later violently vomiting into the trash in my room. Felt AWFUL the next day. Thankfully it seemed to get better quickly, but man. Don't use cleaning chemicals in a closed room!
The most concerning about the ABS dissolving story is that ABS dissolves *reversibly* in ethyl acetate (it doesn't destroy the polymer chains), so wherever it ends up coming back out of the solution, you now potentially have ABS plastic depositing onto the insides of the pipes.
Keeping up the safety shower theme: when I started undergrad chem we were given a safety lecture including proper use of the safety shower. We were told the story of a previous student who had had an accident, either improper dilution of acid or a too hot hot plate, but it ended with them covered in acid. They washed down thoroughly in the lab shower and came out fine, just some damaged clothing. So far so good. However, the people who had installed the safety shower had put in the shower, eye wash station, waterproof tiles, and a drain which was about a half inch above the rest of the floor. None of the water went down the drain. This was a second story lab, directly above the school library. We were instructed to use the shower in case of emergency but never just pull the handle to see what it did, as library ceilings are expensive. Don't know why they didn't just redo the drain.
Ok ok Ive been sitting on this simple and short one, not involving chemicals but involving only a bunsenburner, a tap and a reaction tube: >first lesson of hs chemistry >learn how to bunsen >told to bunsen a reaction tube hot >for whatever reason I decide it should go under the cold tap after, pbbly so I can put it down after >the glass wasnt duralex >>the glass wasnt duralex >reaction tube shatters >I grow red of shame, as the entire class hears it No real danger or harm done, but it shows that you can actually destroy things and even create a glass shard hazard without needing chemicals, while still being in chemistry class. Still feel stupid for not realizing this would happen, but I suppose mankind is smart because it learns from their tons of stupid.
Year or two ago I made a batch of "magnalium", 50/50 by mass Mg/Al alloy, probably about 200g worth. It went fine, and I had a big bag of play sand nearby just in case, but it felt really sketchy and is probably one of the most dangerous things I've done.
"Every time I see a car on the side of the road that's on fire, I remember how much gasoline is in a car" me: **Flashbacks to me driving past a flaming car, then hearing a "FWOOMP!" as a fireball goes up and I feel an instant wave of heat pass straight through the car walls.**
@@lefthandedspanner Oof, working with ammonia once left me with the knowledge that it works well to open your sinuses. I had it cold in the fridge to rinse a product and when cold it doesnt evap quite as fast. I found its smell to be very subtle, but once I noticed it it had this BLAM effect that just creeps into every corner like salmiac but times a billion. Didn't smell that foul as much as it felt like it was actively burning every cell it touchedxD
On cleaners making air unbreathable: the one that does it for me is oven cleaner (ethanolamine). I absolutelly CANNOT STAND that stuff. It's worse than any other household chemical I've ever used. It is even worse than ammonia. I don't know how other people can tolerate this stuff, I actually had to buy a respirator (went with FFP3A2) specifically for it. First time I used it my mind was blown, absolutely none of the smell gets through. I've been using it every time I do anything with chemicals and even just to empty the vacuum cleaner and clean its air filter. Best 30€ I ever spent.
The oven cleaning stuff that is available where I live, at least the most popular one, is a paste of NaOH that is applied with a brush attached to the cap. Also available as a spray. The brushed on paste don't smell at all. The instruction heavily INSIST on the requirement to wear protective gloves and recommend throwing them after use. To never get the stuff get in contact with the skin, and if it does, to wash under running water for at least 15 minutes. The container DO have a corrosive sign in an octagon.
@@Kualinar Here in Italy they don't sell it as a paste and it's not specifically for cleaning ovens, but they'll just straight up sell you anhydrous NaOH flakes in 1kg tubs for generic "cleaning". 1kg costs like 3€. It's _a bit_ terrifying tbh. Convenient for people who know what they're doing, but still terrifying.
@@demoniack81 Do a search for «easy off oven cleaner» and you'll see. They seems to want to phase out the cream version in favour of the spray can and pump spray versions.
13:25 Most modern sewage pipes are made of ABS or PVC pipes. (they're usually giant and blue, you might see road crews installing them) Workers often weld them together with a mixture of methyl ethyl ketone and acetone. I hope those sinks used old pipes and went to some sort of sewer treatment room at that university and not into city sewers.
I remember that I was at a customer and they were moving high pressure gas bottles up some stairs, with the regulators still attached! I was keeping my distance from this soon-to-be accident. The next thing I know the gas bottle was dropped, so I threw myself behind the nearest concrete pillar as I didn't wish to be flattened! As luck would have it the neck of the bottle wasn't broken off (just the regulator). When the head of the department found out, he smacked the guys around the head and told them never to do anything like that again Another one to do with gas cylinders was someone had the bright idea (because they didn't like which side of the regulator the cylinder was on) to have the regulator on the right hand side of the cylinder. What he didn't take note of was the regulator has a high and low pressure side. So the second he opened the regulator he managed to send himself flying backwards as he'd ruptured the diaphragm and sent the back of the regulator shooting into his chest. Luckily he was just bruised
About the battery exploding, I think it was likely a hydrogen explosion. Lead acid batteries can be sealed or vented the vented ones are really unlikely to build pressure and the sealed ones shouldnt be able to generate gas, but all of this assumes the chemistry is correct and the charging system is working properly. if you overcharge a lead acid battery it will make a lot of hydrogen which can easily explode. I've only heard of this happening once though, a repair shop setup a battery to be charged with the vent tube next to a bench grinder so sparks + H2 = boom. fortunately no one was hurt.
My father did home chemistry in his youth. He mainly made explosives, because who does not like explosives? Once he made an IED by mixing nitric acid and glycerol. He put it into a container and used some cord as a fuse. The problem was: The thing did not go off. So there he was in the middle of the forest and trying to decide if and how he should disarm the thing. He was about to inspect it when it finally went off. He estimates that it could have cost him a hand.
Going from the previous episode I am gloved up, the fumehood sash is at a safe height and wearing my eye protection, starting to dispense 35% HCl from an automated dispenser into my sample flasks and without fail, having dispensed the first half dozen or so flasks, I get an itch somewhere on my face...
that magnesium story reminds me of my first chem lesson. that's normally the first hands on lab night for my community college and highschools around here lol
I've seen something kinda related to the battery explosion, and equally terrifying. I was chilling with my friend at his brother's garage, waiting for it to close so we could use it to fix up my car. One of the last customers to pull in was an older guy in a Zastava 1100 (think Fiat 128 on steroids). He wanted his carburetor regulated or something, no big deal. The mechanic opened the hood and immediately ran away, panicking. The older guy followed him, and they had a heated exchange outside. I got out to see what's what, and take a look at what's under the hood on the way. Turns out, the car had an LPG installation with the tank in place of the spare tire. Which wouldn't be that strange or scary, if the space for the spare tire wasn't in the engine bay just over the (hot) engine, which is where the tank, full of LPG, was sitting. Apparently, the guy had valid papers to prove it was up to code and all, but he was told to seek service elsewhere nonetheless. Can't really blame the mechanic; just remembering that makes me uncomfortable. I don't think it'd fare well in a head-on collision. Or even a heatwave, the tank venting LPG due to excess pressure into a potentially hot engine bay isn't great either.
the murcury under the tile floor.... considering concrete floor, self leveling cement, then tile putty we are talking scary thick layer of what is basically a mercury sponge... (and old concrete so probs asbestos as well)
My dad was an ee prof at a state university and helped run the clean room. One time my father found another professor left a large container of silane in a plastic bin outside of the clean room. The university had "let go" the safety technician so he left the silane at the deans office. Legendary stuff. He retired a few years later and this incident was part of the reason.
@@That_Chemist Note- the university just didn't want to pay people to run the clean room. This is the result of a university trying to be profit driven
These stories are great! I have a good one from my college days. I worked at a Wal-mart like store (another company, mainly found in midwest) as a cashier in the mid 90s. The full story was only pieced together later, but basically a man was smoking a cigar while driving one of those motorized carts in the store. He was asked to put it out and angrily threw it in a random direction, which happened to be the children's clothing department. It struck a rack of little girls "Disney's Pocahontas" pajamas which were made of thin synthetic fiber which is essentially plastic. Plastic is made from oil products, its basically solidified oil with some halogens thrown in for extra toxicity and when the cigar hit them, they went up like they had been soaked in gasoline. Within seconds flames were shooting up from the rack and leaping up the the ceiling tiles. I put out the emergency call code for fire and ran to help. We were missing several fire extinguishers up front due to a recent car fire in the lot but thankfully there were more in the back and employees coming that way put it out with theirs. By the time they had, multiple racks of clothing were left smoldering and the entire store was filling with foul toxic smoke. The manager had me open the front doors and prop them then told me to go back to work and just not to ring up any unsealed produce. The clothing area had a lower ceiling and smoke came from the ceiling level down to about half way to the floor and you could see peoples legs and carts as they continued shopping in the toxic plastic smoke like it was nothing. When the fire department arrived the fire marshal went through the roof and evacuated the store and then gave the manager four shades of holy hell in the parking lot afterwards for letting people shop in a smoke filled store. What a day! I hope those PJ's got recalled but I imagine a lot of people had their kids wearing these suicide suits as the movie they were from was very popular at the time. We often don't think about how dangerous the clothing we wear in this day and age have become as companies push to use cheaper and cheaper fibers including plastics to make them.
Speaking of learning and people doing things wrong, a lab on our campus had a high power laser for an instrument that needed to be aligned, and the same technician had been doing it for close to 20 years. At one point he was training someone new to help out and continue when he retired. He had an incident that left the trainee with severe eye damage, so they were investigating and had a safety professional observing what he did to see what might have caused it. During that observation the safety observer also suffered a severe eye injury with lasting impact. Apparently the technician had been doing it incorrectly and I safely for 20 years.
When I was very little, maybe 7, I was wary of walking in front of or behind parked cars because I'd seen the movie Christine. I'm old enough now to understand that cars don't randomly come to life and try to run you over, but they do sometimes explode and cover you in acid.
11:20 not my lane but it appears to be German respirator filter classifications (DIN EN 14387). The letters specified appear to be everything but CO, NOx, radiation, and some hydrocarbons + particulate efficiency 99.95%+
I mentioned the shirt dissolving "prank" in the comments on a previous video. Rocket story reminded me of another incident in highschool chemistry class, same guys. We were building solid fuel Estes rockets out of cardboard tubes and things. I put a fair bit of work into mine. When the time came to launch it, it went up, but when the charge to deploy the parachute fired, it blew up the rocket. Seems one of my classmates had glued the nose cone on. Not sure if stories about getting bullied are what you're looking for, but they have been chemistry related. lol I guess if there's a moral, it's always check your equipment before your experiment. Never assume it's how you left it. You never know who's done what with it between now and the last time you saw it.
That Physical Chemistry is probably simply the name of the class. Where I live, the schools call basic Chemistry "Physical Science: Chemistry" and advanced Chemistry "Honors Chemistry."
at 0:12:00 The channel Sub Brief has a description of a high pressure oil leak in the engineering room of a nuclear sub, can't remember the video name. Basically walking around in recycling scuba gear inside a giant diesel engine cylinder just waiting to stop existing due to a single spark while cleaning up the oil with absorption gear. Could you imagine having to walk into that refinery accident with a stick and a dustpan to clean up the metal?
In regards to the car battery issue... I took a first aid course for a job, and the instructor for the course was an EMT. He mentioned that one of the biggest issues they saw in car accidents was actually chemical burns, because the batteries in hybrid cars are SUBSTANTIAL, and if impacted *just right* can result in lots of leaking acid. Apparently the acid is actually strong enough to cause significant damage to the road surface, potentially removing layers of asphalt. And you are correct, molten metal can be TERRIFYING. I took a class in university on jewelrymaking, and one of the things we did was a technique called lost-wax casting. For those who are not familiar, the most common way this is done in modern times is to make a wax mold of your desired object, put it in a casting flask (basically an open metal cylinder) and fill the flask with a special high-temp plaster. The flask is then put in a kiln to melt out the wax, and placed in a centrifuge. A casting centrifuge basically has the flask sitting horizontally, with a crucible that holds the molten metal butted up against the same hole the wax came out of. You wind up the centrifuge, which is spring-loaded, with a counterweight, melt the metal in the crucible, and release it. The whole thing spins around at some extremely high speeds, and (in theory) centrifugal force lets the metal enter the hot mold extremely rapidly. The whole process takes less than 30 seconds once the weight is released. Only, the professor managed to misalign the exit hole from the crucible to the entrance of the casting flask. When the centrifuge was released, it swung around at high speed, flinging molten silver towards the flask. With no actual outlet for the metal to go into, it was basically flung up the interior curve of the crucible, and right back out. Years later, there was still a distinct line of sterling silver around the perimeter of the room, from the path it took exiting the crucible. I swear, I have no idea how there was no injury from this whole process. In order to melt the metal and release the centrifuge weight, you have to be RIGHT up on it, you can't do it from a distance. Thankfully, the only damage was the bit of redecorating, which was left in place as a warning for what can happen if you don't make sure everything was exactly right.
When I was in the Army, I lived with a roommate in the barracks, and we would alternate cleaning the common area each weekend. When it was his turn to clean, he would dump an entire gallon of undiluted bleach into the mop bucket, then he would add an ounce or two of blue Dawn dish detergent to it. As he mopped the floor, the entire room would fill with noxious gas, and I could feel my lungs burning so intensely it was scary. I showed him the directions on the bleach that said to dilute it for mopping. I showed him the warning on the blue dawn that said, "do not mix with bleach." I explained that he was just poisoning us and making the cleaning products ineffective, but he insisted that it made the floors cleaner. For the rest of the time I lived with him, I had to find somewhere else to go for a few hours when he cleaned.
It's strange that it would happen in a parked car since it's during charge or discharge cycles you have to watch out, but since lead acid batteries produce hydrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen sulfide gas if you work with them professionally you've probably seen them explode before. You get used to wearing eye protection.
I remember our teacher putting dry ice in soda bottles to make grenades. Well, I definitely remember a student running up to an unexploded bottle, picking it up, and throwing it to make it explode... I also remember a 9v battery being discarded into a trashcan half filled with used dry steel wool... That was fun.
My dad was wearing his glasses and his ¾ length (halfway down the calf) Army issue trench coat, synthetic fiber. He was taking the battery charger off the battery (trickle charge to keep it warm, it was -10°C or so) and the battery exploded and sprayed acid everywhere! It didn't hurt him, he had a big splatter all over his coat and a couple of specks on his glasses, so he just cleaned up and we went wherever we were going later.
On the mercury incident, although this lab was relatively well funded, the department head at the time didn't really do much to make sure that this was all compliant. Most people at that time got their professors from people or even ministers, so they didn't get them honestly. Our then Minister of Science and Research (Hans Tuppy) also used his power to "give away" EMs at that time (late 80s / 90s). At that time it was still something special, because the Boku for example also got one and was one of the few universities besides Camebridge, which had a fully equipped EM.
4:31 Truly a Yikes™ moment. 4:34-5:30 Nice and Yikes™ 5:31-6:58 25 kg of essentially a powdered source of sulfuric acid, with cuts on the bag, while raining? Truly a Yikes™ moment, once again. 6:59-8:14 Exploding microwave, yikes! 8:15-9:23 Yikes! 20 m³ of 1,1-dimethylhydrazine... I wonder, did those people, who were working with the huge spill of UDMH, die of cancer (caused by the UDMH)? 9:24-10:52 Battery baptism 🔋 (Still a yikes! Also, just like some comments said, you can dispose of the battery in the sea. Pollution😋)
PSA from a mechanic regarding batteries: When jumpstarting a car battery, always hook up the cables "positive-to-positive negative-to-ground." As in: 1. hook one end of the positive cable to the donor battery's positive terminal, 2. hook the other end of the positive cable to the discharged battery's positive terminal, 3. hook up one lead of the negative cable to the donor battery's negative terminal, 4. and finally the other end of the negative cable should be attached to a good ground away from the battery. Removal of the cables is done in the reverse order that they are hooked up. Normally, I use the alternator or one of the suspension bolts as a ground if the car doesn't have dedicated jump start terminals. The reason for doing it like this instead of just attaching the last lead to the battery directly is because lead acid batteries tend to generate hydrogen gas, and the last lead you hook up almost always creates a spark that can serve as an ignition source, which could lead to an explosion. I've yet to have it happen to me, but my instructor once got "lucky" and a battery blew up in his face. Luckily, this was during the COVID lockdown, and he was wearing a faceshield so none of the acid got on his face. He still had to bolt to the safety shower to wash off all the sulfuric acid, though.
Molten metal story: I had a backyard aluminium foundry and I was poking at the melt inside the furnace, in a steel crucible, with a piece of steel bar. Molten aluminium is like water. It splashed and flew out, landing on my upper lip. I quickly brush it away but not before I get a second degree burn on my lip. Yes, molten metal is scary and I learned a little more respect for it that day.
I've boiled a battery once. i had left a NAPA battery charger plugged in to a 6v battery for hours, only i set the machine to 12v high on accident. i came back to the fill caps open and the electrolyte was spitting and popping. right when i got to the charger to shut it off, there was a big pop and a bunch of acid flew out. i was lucky and didn't get any on me though. the cherry on top was when i removed the vice grip holding one of the charger leads on, the handle snapped open and connected to the other terminal. there was a big pop and a spark and i got 6v DC at probably 100 amps through my hand for a second. luckily the vice grip just fell down and i wasn't stuck riding the lightning. don't use a battery charger that has a broken lead and is set for the wrong type of battery lol
A few years ago I built this electrolysis rig out of cut up soda bottles, water, a bucket, and thin hose (actually the insulator off a piece of wire). Very janky, but worked. I used soda ash as the electrolyte, and I think it had lead electrodes, though they mighth've been stainless at that point. Well, once I was playing around with a little HHO cannon, a thin pipe taped to _a fucking glass bottle_, I know right! I filled the bottle from the other room with that thin hose, and lit it via the tube as well. I did the stoichiometrics for butane and oxygen, mixed it using a soda bottle gasometer, and filled the glass cannon with the gas. When it came to lighting it, all the water accumulated in the tube, because of all the HHO, blocked the flame, and the cannon didn't light. So I went to the cannon to light it with the backup-piezo. I held my knee between the bottle and my face, just in case the bottle breaks. Didn't light. I went back to the other room, tried the tube ignition again, and BOOM! The bottle exploded with might, and I could hear thousands of little brown glass shards bouncing about my place. A bang so loud, I surely would have gone a bit deaf, and had lots of glass in my leg, were I still next to it. There're shrapnelmarks on the ceiling. Very powerful.
Omg the battery thing happened to my dad once. He said he was coated in lead acid battery paste. Not sure how he didn't get severely burned, or heavy metal poisoned. Also ohhhh my god that molten steel story is terrifying
I've got a nice mercury story: Imagine being in grade five, and your science teacher pulls out some magnets and a bag of iron filings - you are about to learn about magnetism no doubt. We each get our magnet and divvied out pile of metal dust, and the teacher gives us a minute to play about with it before getting to the lesson at hand... What catches my eye are hundreds of tiny ball-bearing things popping in and out of my pile of supposedly just iron, and I immediately started gathering them up in a folded piece of paper, using the magnet to separate the iron from this strangely frictionless metal (I distinctly remember these beads whizzing about on the paper as I tried to keep them away from the iron; I'm sure one or two got away) So there's me just casually playing around with the coolest thing i'd seen in my life at the time - when the teacher looks at what i'm doing, and tells me to stop as usual. But as i'm wondering what I did wrong, he takes my materials away, then looks intently at everybody else's work before taking their materials away in a panic. So the lesson gets stripped of materials, and our teacher is gone for a while before coming back and explaining that the iron filings had been contaminated with mercury... So for a long story short, 30 kids got exposed to a fair quantity of mercury - and I don't recall us all being forced to wash our hands either, so god knows how many of us suffered from mild mercury poisoning 😬
Physical chemistry sounds like the required class I took in 9th grade, and its called that bc the first semester is focused on chemistry (I have a whole lab safety story from the final for that semester, if anyones interested), and the second semester is focused on physics. I could of course be wrong about this, but i figured i'd give my 2 cents on it
weirdest chemistry thing ive seen, friend spilled a drop of clove oil onto their mechanical keyboard. turns out clove oil is chemically similar to whatever solvent is used to dissolve those soft-touch rubber coatings on mechanical keyboards owned by friends. of all the oils to drip on there lol wild shit
Chlorine clouds in the bathroom are bad . So is Ammonia . The combination is of course , worse . There are documented cases of people being asphyxiated by their own flatulence . Maybe TC could do another tier ranking , this time of noxious clouds likely to be encountered in a bathroom .
At least in absence of a safety shower, that guy had a safety ocean.
There may be piranha in the lab, but there are also piranhas in the ocean
Ah yes, the classic; the nature's second chempit
@@blueberry1c2 Piranhas are fresh water only fish. So, there are none in the ocean.
@@Kualinar welp, I didn't say I was a biologist lol
@@aloysiuskurnia7643 Can't burn chems or the soldiers get sick, can't dump chems in the ocean or the fish die and start making the consumers sick... Can't do anything anymore these days:(
Good thing he was close to the sea, where he could easily and safely dispose of the battery.
It's perfectly legal!
I sure do love disposing of my car batteries by throwing them into the ocean
Oh my gosh 🤣
@@nikkothegoblin Thank you for your services! The electric eel clan will not forget your deeds, and rise to your aid as the tide rises beyond your feet in your biggest time of need!
@@yukisaitou5004 and thrilling
"[Powdered] acid is only dangerous if it's mixed with water."
Uh... I mean, sweat has water in it, too.
or more importantly, *your eyes*
Good thing we're only about 70% made of water
Here's some wisdom a more experienced engineer shared with me: if no one saw any flames, it's not a fire; it's a "thermal event"
I don't remember the details, but in 9th grade our chemistry classroom was completely renovated, new walls, new desks, new ceiling, everything was spotless, even a new chem-teacher. His first comment was "Hi i'm Tobias! They call this a 'chemistry lab' it is NOT, there isn't a SINGLE burn mark in the ceiling". He spent the rest of the semester trying to make as many holes as possible. After holding a balloon while talking about Helium he let a balloon go and lit the string like a fuse (most of the class takes cover, I don't, because ,duh, Helium isn't flammable) as the flame starts to lick the balloon he calmly continues "of course, as you know, this school is rather strapped for cache so we couldn't afford Helium, this is Hydrogen." I didn't have the time to cover my ears, but as it luckily was pure hydrogen the explosion was loud but not deafening. I also recall his thick perspex blast-shield that he would put around various experiments, I don't quite remember which but I do recall one with a precariously placed bunsenburner magnesum flakes and concentrated ummm Sulfuric (?) acid. That stained the ceiling..
That sounds fun |-o-|
I love how he wasn't motivated by anything like trying to make the labs interesting for the students, but instead solely by the desire to cause property damage with lasting marks lol.
@@ProtoV33MK1 honestly I can't think of a better method to make it interesting for the students.
I'm not saying it wasn't, but I love that this implies that was only a happy side-effect.@@DeuxisWasTaken
Not chemistry related, but those guys cheating on the exam (2:41) reminded me of a girl in school who tried to cheat in latin. The teacher had made it easy to guess or even announced what text we would have to translate in an upcoming test, so some students used translations to prepare, some may even have secretly used them during the test. When we got the test back, the teacher praised the translation that one girl did, but ended with "she even translated the sentences I cut from the text".🤣
Hahaha
Regarding the accumulated mercury story: Here at the university in Karlsruhe apparently the same thing happened. Before they had gloveboxes, chemistry under inert gas was executed in boxes with the opening dumped into a bath of mercury. So you could just reach with your arms through the mercury and do your chemistry without having to worry about air contamination. So they had large quantities of mercury in the lab and any spilled mercury would just seek its ways through the cracks in the wooden floor to leave a big surprise for the construction crew, when the building was renovated eventually. I really don't envy chemists back then.
As insane as the danger is with your face presumably quite close to a pool of mercury, the actual mechanics of it are also wild. I imagine that would actually be a significant amount of force to displace enough mercury to get your hands in and manulpulate things. Plus it must be uncomfortable on your arms while you're working.
The end joke with Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Ohm is a brilliant science joke. Heard it a while ago but it's always put a smile on my face. Ohm resists XD
Story from my grandfather
As a teenager , he and his hoodlum friends would steal bars of potassium from the high school lab .
They would place the potassium on a small bottle of water , put the combination in a paper bag , and , lay it on the street car tracks .
Of course it looked like innocuous trash until the first wheel broke the bottle and the second wheel arrived just in time for the big reaction , which was just enough to knock the streetcar off the track .
My grandfather eventually retired from teaching chemistry , many decades later .
That is awful
True , but not the worst thing , by far , happening in Chicago at that period in time .
@@kaboom4679
Shite argument for blatantly shite behavior
Low key anarcho-terrorism.
Not a chemist, but hardware engineer:
That 25kgs bags remind me of my "lab" setup, where I ordered about 60kgs of different chemicals including acids, bases etc. and that came in two packages (because our postal services have limit of 30kgs per package unless it's on pallet). Of course packages often contained incompatible chemicals (eg. 35% H2O2 and pure acetone in one package lol). Of course delivery man had no PPE, neither gloves and eye protection. "Safety first".
[Another package contained concentrated nitric acid (70%), con. sulfuric acid (98%) and hexamine...]
:(
The proper PPE, I guess, would have been a bomb disposal suit.
My grandfather was an engineer, he designed chemical plants and factories. When i was young he explained how they'd kick around mercury that had leaked from some machinery... On one occasion they had to run for their lives after a chlorine leak, heading upwind so the cloud wouldn't catch up. I was a kid and didn't realise how bad those things were, now i suspect his poor health was probably not only the consequence of smoking...
Early on in my phd we were doing a lot of scanning electron microscopy. The proteins we studied complexed with lipids, so we had to stain them too. For this we used osmium tetroxide (which is highly volatile, acutely poisonous, and can permanently blind you by staining your corneas black). Before teaching us how to work with it, my boss told us a story from her phd. One of her lab members had improperly stored a solution they had been using (they didn't store the container inside another container in the hood) and went home for the night. When my boss came in the next morning, the fume hood's sash was stained black. It was a huge problem to deal with that required special people to clean it up, a lot of downtime as the lab wasn't safe to enter, and was of-course quite costly. Fortunately the sash was closed, so it didn't contaminate the whole lab and nobody was injured. I always felt pretty uneasy working with the stuff and am glad that that I don't have to deal with it anymore.
Was using that osmium tetroxide the only option to stain those samples ? It looks like any other alternative would have been preferable.
@@Kualinar I think for our work it really was the best option. OTO can be nasty, but I think the purpose of that story was to scare us enough into treating it with care, which it did quite well. We never had any mishaps thankfully.
0:25 Molten magnesium. Now that’s a fun thought, actually any molten red-hot metal is.
3:19 I remember a project we had to in my freshman year. Looking at the specifications, it looked like we were supposed to program tic-tac-toe with an 8 by 6 grid. But looking at the specifications more closely, there was an “error” that made the program not work. I fixed the “error” and presented it to my professor. She said my program was wrong, and it wasn’t supposed to work. I still got high grade for it though.
@@ChemEDan I did ask her, and she said that the point was if we could properly parse and translate logical statements into code.
The statement she gave was long, and there was only one operator that made it not work. I implemented the rest of the statement correctly and as intended, so maybe that’s why I still got a high grade.
In a 10th grade high school chemistry class and we were doing an experiment heating some sort of powder. I think it was something copper based? It was to show the difference in mass once we heated it up and evaporated water from it and an easily intro to the lab equipment. We’re all heating up the little burners carefully and the teacher is going around the room checking people’s stuff. There was supposed to be a color change and then we shut off the burners and weigh it. The teacher mentions this out loud while explaining. One person, with great confusion, declares, “Mine’s a liquid.” This caused our chemistry teacher to walk over and sigh before explaining that they had heated it too much.
I could see the guy with the microwave deciding ‘It’s time to retire this microwave. Let’s make a safety demonstration with it.’ -> Inset BLEVE here -> Show remains to the classes for a ‘This is what happens if you don’t use your head in labs’ demonstration.
Lead acid car batteries can form hydrogen and explode if there's also a spark (says Captain Obvious). My Dad had this happen while driving, no one was near the battery so no injuries except to the battery. This is a good reminder to wear safety glasses and follow proper procedure when jump starting.
One of my coworkers had an old beater station wagon that he was using to take his kids somewhere. The kids commented that there was smoke coming from under the car. Suspecting an exhaust problem my coworker opened the windows. Then the kids commented that there were flames coming from under the car. They pulled over and got out and were watching the car burn (no cell phones yet). The kids were fascinated by the fire and kept getting closer so my coworker grabbed both of them and dragged them really far away, more as a punishment than for safety. Soon after a huge fireball erupted and engulfed the area where they were all standing, they were safe in their new location. Never underestimate the fire potential of 20 gallons of gasoline.
Be mindful of any batteries that you have, especially lipo and li-ion. I've had a few old 18650s, so I just put them in a bag with some other old batteries that my mom wanted to throw out to a designated bin at a supermarket. She was driving with them in her car for some time, and she kept on forgetting about them. A few weeks ago, she just took them out of the car and left the bag next to the thrash bins we have outside. After 2 or 3 days, a neighbour heard a loud boom and went to check what happened. Well, one of the batteries must've shorted somehow (maybe ruined insulation) and exploded, resulting in a fire of bins filled with paper and plastic, and the styrofoam insulation of the house. Like half of the wall just had a burned/melted thermal insulation. The neighbour said he doesn't remember how they got through the fence, but they managed to extinguish it.
Left a battery in my gopro and it expanded and cracked the frame. Shit's legit scary. D:
My dad has long told this story:
In the early stages of his and my mother’s relationship, my dad was an avid home brewer. With an engineering background, he had previously studied both physics and chem. However, that didn’t stop him from using concentrated acid as a method of sterilisation while wearing shorts, a shirt, no shoes and no eye protection. Turns out, one of the flexible tubes which was carrying this acid (under pressure) had a small hole from deterioration. This caused a stream of concentrated acid to spray directly into his left eye. A hospital trip and lots of recovery later, he made a partial recovery; he still had his sight, with a cloudy spot remaining over his pupil, the colour of his iris changed from a dark green to light blue (just the major issues.) I’ve grown up with the importance of PPE ingrained pretty well and I’m quite sure we have enough safety glasses/face shields now for an entire school class. He recently had a cornea transplant which removed the growing cloudy spot and improved clarity and depth perception. Nowadays, my parents have been together over 25 years (somehow) and my dad lives a relatively normal life (with regular medication and eye drops).
Needless to say, the moral of the story is to always wear PPE. You never expect an accident to happen when it does. Wear safety glasses.
15:01 Nope, moar like "I AM THE DANGER!"
7:00 adjustable pliers are the universal solution for stuck stoppers, even ground glass ones
strap wrenches though - S-tier
In school we used a pencil and some hot water lol
The disintegrating ABS probes remind me of 3D printing: When printing with ABS I use acetone (which the local hardware store fortunately sells in large amounts as paint thinner) for several different things because it also solves ("melts") ABS: I use acetone with a bit of solved ABS on the base plate of the printer to make the prints stick on glass, I use acetone basically as "glue" to make multiple pieces of ABS stick together and I use a huge pickle jar as an acetone vapor chamber to vapor smooth fresh prints that I want smoothed
When i was in high school we extracted metallic lead from something on a spoon over a Bunsen, we didn't get much lead so i grabbed my pocket knife and a sinker and shaved off some lead to add.. the teacher was amazed and made everyone in the class look at how well our experiment worked 🤣.. the teacher never figured out that something wasn't right even though we had more lead than the reagents we started with 🤣
What a king lmao
Mom said it's my turn to play with the unsymmetrical Dimethyl-Hydrazine!
Unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine at home: CH3-NH-NH-CH3
2:20 Reminds me of the time I poisoned myself with Spic-and-span! I was mopping in my bedroom, an area in the corner that my cats like using as a litterbox when I wasn't home 🙃So maybe the ammonia in the pee reacted or something on top of everything else, idk. I filled a big bowl with a random amount of S&S (the label is INSIDE the bottle and hard to read, so I just guessed on the amount) and got to mopping. My one cat came in, and TRIED DRINKING THE SOAPY MOP WATER so I had to close my door. (Yes, he is orange.) It was December, so my windows were all shut and taped over too. Like an hour after cleaning, I start feeling very weak, fatigued and nauseous. It was super early in the morning and I hadn't slept yet, so I just thought I was crashing and went to bed. Proceeded to get woken up like an hour later violently vomiting into the trash in my room. Felt AWFUL the next day. Thankfully it seemed to get better quickly, but man. Don't use cleaning chemicals in a closed room!
(yes he is orange) lol
The most concerning about the ABS dissolving story is that ABS dissolves *reversibly* in ethyl acetate (it doesn't destroy the polymer chains), so wherever it ends up coming back out of the solution, you now potentially have ABS plastic depositing onto the insides of the pipes.
The joke at the end had me in stitches, still wiping coffee from my monitor! 😆😆
hahaha
12:00 Well that story gave me goosebumps, I have no idea how no one got hurt, that's so incredibly lucky.
This has officially displaced CueStar as my favorite screwup channel.
glad to hear it :)
Keeping up the safety shower theme: when I started undergrad chem we were given a safety lecture including proper use of the safety shower. We were told the story of a previous student who had had an accident, either improper dilution of acid or a too hot hot plate, but it ended with them covered in acid. They washed down thoroughly in the lab shower and came out fine, just some damaged clothing. So far so good. However, the people who had installed the safety shower had put in the shower, eye wash station, waterproof tiles, and a drain which was about a half inch above the rest of the floor. None of the water went down the drain. This was a second story lab, directly above the school library. We were instructed to use the shower in case of emergency but never just pull the handle to see what it did, as library ceilings are expensive. Don't know why they didn't just redo the drain.
Ok ok Ive been sitting on this simple and short one, not involving chemicals but involving only a bunsenburner, a tap and a reaction tube:
>first lesson of hs chemistry
>learn how to bunsen
>told to bunsen a reaction tube hot
>for whatever reason I decide it should go under the cold tap after, pbbly so I can put it down after
>the glass wasnt duralex
>>the glass wasnt duralex
>reaction tube shatters
>I grow red of shame, as the entire class hears it
No real danger or harm done, but it shows that you can actually destroy things and even create a glass shard hazard without needing chemicals, while still being in chemistry class. Still feel stupid for not realizing this would happen, but I suppose mankind is smart because it learns from their tons of stupid.
Bunsin'
@@karolus28 fr fr
oh god, I've seen someone get coated in battery, it's a scary time
Year or two ago I made a batch of "magnalium", 50/50 by mass Mg/Al alloy, probably about 200g worth. It went fine, and I had a big bag of play sand nearby just in case, but it felt really sketchy and is probably one of the most dangerous things I've done.
Hahaha
"Every time I see a car on the side of the road that's on fire, I remember how much gasoline is in a car"
me: **Flashbacks to me driving past a flaming car, then hearing a "FWOOMP!" as a fireball goes up and I feel an instant wave of heat pass straight through the car walls.**
Bet the toilet cleaner is something like hypochloric tablets instead of bleach and just creates a nice chlorine cloud in the shitter
or ammonia
@@lefthandedspanner Oof, working with ammonia once left me with the knowledge that it works well to open your sinuses. I had it cold in the fridge to rinse a product and when cold it doesnt evap quite as fast. I found its smell to be very subtle, but once I noticed it it had this BLAM effect that just creeps into every corner like salmiac but times a billion. Didn't smell that foul as much as it felt like it was actively burning every cell it touchedxD
On cleaners making air unbreathable: the one that does it for me is oven cleaner (ethanolamine). I absolutelly CANNOT STAND that stuff. It's worse than any other household chemical I've ever used. It is even worse than ammonia.
I don't know how other people can tolerate this stuff, I actually had to buy a respirator (went with FFP3A2) specifically for it. First time I used it my mind was blown, absolutely none of the smell gets through. I've been using it every time I do anything with chemicals and even just to empty the vacuum cleaner and clean its air filter.
Best 30€ I ever spent.
The oven cleaning stuff that is available where I live, at least the most popular one, is a paste of NaOH that is applied with a brush attached to the cap. Also available as a spray.
The brushed on paste don't smell at all. The instruction heavily INSIST on the requirement to wear protective gloves and recommend throwing them after use. To never get the stuff get in contact with the skin, and if it does, to wash under running water for at least 15 minutes. The container DO have a corrosive sign in an octagon.
@@Kualinar Here in Italy they don't sell it as a paste and it's not specifically for cleaning ovens, but they'll just straight up sell you anhydrous NaOH flakes in 1kg tubs for generic "cleaning". 1kg costs like 3€.
It's _a bit_ terrifying tbh. Convenient for people who know what they're doing, but still terrifying.
@@demoniack81 Do a search for «easy off oven cleaner» and you'll see. They seems to want to phase out the cream version in favour of the spray can and pump spray versions.
how about perfumes/cologne? that shit is irrating and makes me cough idk why people dump like a whole bottle
13:25
Most modern sewage pipes are made of ABS or PVC pipes. (they're usually giant and blue, you might see road crews installing them)
Workers often weld them together with a mixture of methyl ethyl ketone and acetone. I hope those sinks used old pipes and went to some sort of sewer treatment room at that university and not into city sewers.
I remember that I was at a customer and they were moving high pressure gas bottles up some stairs, with the regulators still attached! I was keeping my distance from this soon-to-be accident.
The next thing I know the gas bottle was dropped, so I threw myself behind the nearest concrete pillar as I didn't wish to be flattened! As luck would have it the neck of the bottle wasn't broken off (just the regulator). When the head of the department found out, he smacked the guys around the head and told them never to do anything like that again
Another one to do with gas cylinders was someone had the bright idea (because they didn't like which side of the regulator the cylinder was on) to have the regulator on the right hand side of the cylinder. What he didn't take note of was the regulator has a high and low pressure side. So the second he opened the regulator he managed to send himself flying backwards as he'd ruptured the diaphragm and sent the back of the regulator shooting into his chest. Luckily he was just bruised
Chemiolis just got some compressed cylinders of gas and I got on his case immediately for not chaining his cylinders
He could probably use some ‘additional encouragement’ though ;)
About the battery exploding, I think it was likely a hydrogen explosion. Lead acid batteries can be sealed or vented the vented ones are really unlikely to build pressure and the sealed ones shouldnt be able to generate gas, but all of this assumes the chemistry is correct and the charging system is working properly. if you overcharge a lead acid battery it will make a lot of hydrogen which can easily explode.
I've only heard of this happening once though, a repair shop setup a battery to be charged with the vent tube next to a bench grinder so sparks + H2 = boom. fortunately no one was hurt.
My father did home chemistry in his youth. He mainly made explosives, because who does not like explosives? Once he made an IED by mixing nitric acid and glycerol. He put it into a container and used some cord as a fuse. The problem was: The thing did not go off. So there he was in the middle of the forest and trying to decide if and how he should disarm the thing. He was about to inspect it when it finally went off. He estimates that it could have cost him a hand.
Explosives are really dangerous if people don’t follow protocol
Lab coats and goggles at the beach? We are Devo
It’s the new fashion trend this season
Going from the previous episode I am gloved up, the fumehood sash is at a safe height and wearing my eye protection, starting to dispense 35% HCl from an automated dispenser into my sample flasks and without fail, having dispensed the first half dozen or so flasks, I get an itch somewhere on my face...
that magnesium story reminds me of my first chem lesson. that's normally the first hands on lab night for my community college and highschools around here lol
anyone notice he censored "damn" but not "shit"
I've seen something kinda related to the battery explosion, and equally terrifying.
I was chilling with my friend at his brother's garage, waiting for it to close so we could use it to fix up my car. One of the last customers to pull in was an older guy in a Zastava 1100 (think Fiat 128 on steroids). He wanted his carburetor regulated or something, no big deal. The mechanic opened the hood and immediately ran away, panicking. The older guy followed him, and they had a heated exchange outside. I got out to see what's what, and take a look at what's under the hood on the way.
Turns out, the car had an LPG installation with the tank in place of the spare tire. Which wouldn't be that strange or scary, if the space for the spare tire wasn't in the engine bay just over the (hot) engine, which is where the tank, full of LPG, was sitting. Apparently, the guy had valid papers to prove it was up to code and all, but he was told to seek service elsewhere nonetheless. Can't really blame the mechanic; just remembering that makes me uncomfortable. I don't think it'd fare well in a head-on collision. Or even a heatwave, the tank venting LPG due to excess pressure into a potentially hot engine bay isn't great either.
11:18 the filter markings mean:
Organic, inorganic, acidic, ammonia and amines, expanded organic, mercury, dust particles
I'm not a chemist, but I do have a basic bio-chemistry joke I made:
What do you call the action of a plant taking a picture?
Photosynthesis.
the murcury under the tile floor.... considering concrete floor, self leveling cement, then tile putty we are talking scary thick layer of what is basically a mercury sponge... (and old concrete so probs asbestos as well)
My dad was an ee prof at a state university and helped run the clean room. One time my father found another professor left a large container of silane in a plastic bin outside of the clean room. The university had "let go" the safety technician so he left the silane at the deans office. Legendary stuff. He retired a few years later and this incident was part of the reason.
Yikes!
@@That_Chemist Note- the university just didn't want to pay people to run the clean room. This is the result of a university trying to be profit driven
They thought they could save money by using lecturers as techs as if they had time to do two jobs.
These stories are great! I have a good one from my college days. I worked at a Wal-mart like store (another company, mainly found in midwest) as a cashier in the mid 90s. The full story was only pieced together later, but basically a man was smoking a cigar while driving one of those motorized carts in the store. He was asked to put it out and angrily threw it in a random direction, which happened to be the children's clothing department. It struck a rack of little girls "Disney's Pocahontas" pajamas which were made of thin synthetic fiber which is essentially plastic. Plastic is made from oil products, its basically solidified oil with some halogens thrown in for extra toxicity and when the cigar hit them, they went up like they had been soaked in gasoline. Within seconds flames were shooting up from the rack and leaping up the the ceiling tiles. I put out the emergency call code for fire and ran to help. We were missing several fire extinguishers up front due to a recent car fire in the lot but thankfully there were more in the back and employees coming that way put it out with theirs. By the time they had, multiple racks of clothing were left smoldering and the entire store was filling with foul toxic smoke. The manager had me open the front doors and prop them then told me to go back to work and just not to ring up any unsealed produce. The clothing area had a lower ceiling and smoke came from the ceiling level down to about half way to the floor and you could see peoples legs and carts as they continued shopping in the toxic plastic smoke like it was nothing. When the fire department arrived the fire marshal went through the roof and evacuated the store and then gave the manager four shades of holy hell in the parking lot afterwards for letting people shop in a smoke filled store. What a day! I hope those PJ's got recalled but I imagine a lot of people had their kids wearing these suicide suits as the movie they were from was very popular at the time. We often don't think about how dangerous the clothing we wear in this day and age have become as companies push to use cheaper and cheaper fibers including plastics to make them.
Speaking of learning and people doing things wrong, a lab on our campus had a high power laser for an instrument that needed to be aligned, and the same technician had been doing it for close to 20 years. At one point he was training someone new to help out and continue when he retired. He had an incident that left the trainee with severe eye damage, so they were investigating and had a safety professional observing what he did to see what might have caused it. During that observation the safety observer also suffered a severe eye injury with lasting impact. Apparently the technician had been doing it incorrectly and I safely for 20 years.
Oh my gosh
20m³ of UDMH is when the Haz-Mat team runs screaming in terror
When I was very little, maybe 7, I was wary of walking in front of or behind parked cars because I'd seen the movie Christine. I'm old enough now to understand that cars don't randomly come to life and try to run you over, but they do sometimes explode and cover you in acid.
11:20 not my lane but it appears to be German respirator filter classifications (DIN EN 14387). The letters specified appear to be everything but CO, NOx, radiation, and some hydrocarbons + particulate efficiency 99.95%+
I mentioned the shirt dissolving "prank" in the comments on a previous video. Rocket story reminded me of another incident in highschool chemistry class, same guys. We were building solid fuel Estes rockets out of cardboard tubes and things. I put a fair bit of work into mine. When the time came to launch it, it went up, but when the charge to deploy the parachute fired, it blew up the rocket. Seems one of my classmates had glued the nose cone on. Not sure if stories about getting bullied are what you're looking for, but they have been chemistry related. lol
I guess if there's a moral, it's always check your equipment before your experiment. Never assume it's how you left it. You never know who's done what with it between now and the last time you saw it.
That Physical Chemistry is probably simply the name of the class. Where I live, the schools call basic Chemistry "Physical Science: Chemistry" and advanced Chemistry "Honors Chemistry."
9:57 that's a missed money opportunity man, I would have just called an ambulance and lawyered up.
That is a very roundabout way to get to the punchline of that very inane meme about throwing car batteries into the ocean.
Thanks, that joke at the end was awesome! I'll have to try to remember it and see if anyone I know likes it.
Drain pipes are made of ABS usually. So there’s a chance that the inner surface of the plumbing would be damaged by the mixture.
Rusty, almost learned his lesson - ALWAYS wear safety goggles.
at 0:12:00 The channel Sub Brief has a description of a high pressure oil leak in the engineering room of a nuclear sub, can't remember the video name. Basically walking around in recycling scuba gear inside a giant diesel engine cylinder just waiting to stop existing due to a single spark while cleaning up the oil with absorption gear. Could you imagine having to walk into that refinery accident with a stick and a dustpan to clean up the metal?
The best part was that joke, I just about split my sides with that one. I really needed a good laugh.
In regards to the car battery issue... I took a first aid course for a job, and the instructor for the course was an EMT. He mentioned that one of the biggest issues they saw in car accidents was actually chemical burns, because the batteries in hybrid cars are SUBSTANTIAL, and if impacted *just right* can result in lots of leaking acid. Apparently the acid is actually strong enough to cause significant damage to the road surface, potentially removing layers of asphalt.
And you are correct, molten metal can be TERRIFYING. I took a class in university on jewelrymaking, and one of the things we did was a technique called lost-wax casting. For those who are not familiar, the most common way this is done in modern times is to make a wax mold of your desired object, put it in a casting flask (basically an open metal cylinder) and fill the flask with a special high-temp plaster. The flask is then put in a kiln to melt out the wax, and placed in a centrifuge. A casting centrifuge basically has the flask sitting horizontally, with a crucible that holds the molten metal butted up against the same hole the wax came out of. You wind up the centrifuge, which is spring-loaded, with a counterweight, melt the metal in the crucible, and release it. The whole thing spins around at some extremely high speeds, and (in theory) centrifugal force lets the metal enter the hot mold extremely rapidly. The whole process takes less than 30 seconds once the weight is released.
Only, the professor managed to misalign the exit hole from the crucible to the entrance of the casting flask. When the centrifuge was released, it swung around at high speed, flinging molten silver towards the flask. With no actual outlet for the metal to go into, it was basically flung up the interior curve of the crucible, and right back out. Years later, there was still a distinct line of sterling silver around the perimeter of the room, from the path it took exiting the crucible. I swear, I have no idea how there was no injury from this whole process. In order to melt the metal and release the centrifuge weight, you have to be RIGHT up on it, you can't do it from a distance. Thankfully, the only damage was the bit of redecorating, which was left in place as a warning for what can happen if you don't make sure everything was exactly right.
When I was in the Army, I lived with a roommate in the barracks, and we would alternate cleaning the common area each weekend. When it was his turn to clean, he would dump an entire gallon of undiluted bleach into the mop bucket, then he would add an ounce or two of blue Dawn dish detergent to it. As he mopped the floor, the entire room would fill with noxious gas, and I could feel my lungs burning so intensely it was scary. I showed him the directions on the bleach that said to dilute it for mopping. I showed him the warning on the blue dawn that said, "do not mix with bleach." I explained that he was just poisoning us and making the cleaning products ineffective, but he insisted that it made the floors cleaner. For the rest of the time I lived with him, I had to find somewhere else to go for a few hours when he cleaned.
It's strange that it would happen in a parked car since it's during charge or discharge cycles you have to watch out, but since lead acid batteries produce hydrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen sulfide gas if you work with them professionally you've probably seen them explode before. You get used to wearing eye protection.
The end joke is amazing lmao
I remember our teacher putting dry ice in soda bottles to make grenades. Well, I definitely remember a student running up to an unexploded bottle, picking it up, and throwing it to make it explode...
I also remember a 9v battery being discarded into a trashcan half filled with used dry steel wool... That was fun.
My dad was wearing his glasses and his ¾ length (halfway down the calf) Army issue trench coat, synthetic fiber.
He was taking the battery charger off the battery (trickle charge to keep it warm, it was -10°C or so) and the battery exploded and sprayed acid everywhere! It didn't hurt him, he had a big splatter all over his coat and a couple of specks on his glasses, so he just cleaned up and we went wherever we were going later.
I hate it when I have to use the safety running leap instead of the safety shower
2:19 that sounds like a cleaner that will clean anything
yeah, the UDMH story is completely terrifying. 20m3 exploding would easily level a city block, perhaps more. with extra cancer for everyone, too!
On the mercury incident, although this lab was relatively well funded, the department head at the time didn't really do much to make sure that this was all compliant. Most people at that time got their professors from people or even ministers, so they didn't get them honestly. Our then Minister of Science and Research (Hans Tuppy) also used his power to "give away" EMs at that time (late 80s / 90s). At that time it was still something special, because the Boku for example also got one and was one of the few universities besides Camebridge, which had a fully equipped EM.
Battery Baptism sounds like a torture method.
'basically naked and soaked in battery acid' - hot
Missed opportunity to say 'zaptised'
4:31 Truly a Yikes™ moment.
4:34-5:30 Nice and Yikes™
5:31-6:58 25 kg of essentially a powdered source of sulfuric acid, with cuts on the bag, while raining? Truly a Yikes™ moment, once again.
6:59-8:14 Exploding microwave, yikes!
8:15-9:23 Yikes! 20 m³ of 1,1-dimethylhydrazine... I wonder, did those people, who were working with the huge spill of UDMH, die of cancer (caused by the UDMH)?
9:24-10:52 Battery baptism 🔋 (Still a yikes! Also, just like some comments said, you can dispose of the battery in the sea. Pollution😋)
PSA from a mechanic regarding batteries:
When jumpstarting a car battery, always hook up the cables "positive-to-positive negative-to-ground." As in:
1. hook one end of the positive cable to the donor battery's positive terminal,
2. hook the other end of the positive cable to the discharged battery's positive terminal,
3. hook up one lead of the negative cable to the donor battery's negative terminal,
4. and finally the other end of the negative cable should be attached to a good ground away from the battery.
Removal of the cables is done in the reverse order that they are hooked up.
Normally, I use the alternator or one of the suspension bolts as a ground if the car doesn't have dedicated jump start terminals.
The reason for doing it like this instead of just attaching the last lead to the battery directly is because lead acid batteries tend to generate hydrogen gas, and the last lead you hook up almost always creates a spark that can serve as an ignition source, which could lead to an explosion.
I've yet to have it happen to me, but my instructor once got "lucky" and a battery blew up in his face. Luckily, this was during the COVID lockdown, and he was wearing a faceshield so none of the acid got on his face. He still had to bolt to the safety shower to wash off all the sulfuric acid, though.
Yikes!
Hey, TC! I love the new thumbnail style ❤️
Thank you :)
When baptism by fire is not enough
That UDMH leak story had me thinking about the introduction to Ignition!
I wish we did chemistry experiments in high school. We just did basic math and reviewed fundamentals.
Chempilationᵀᴹ Making undergrads pursue theoretical and computational chemistry since 2022
I hope not :P
By boiling stone, do you mean those little jagged ceramic pieces that I commonly used in so many labs ?
AKA shrapnel .
@@kaboom4679 They where called «ceramic shards», not shrapnel😁
@@Kualinar they'd be if something went wrong in the wrong way 😁
Molten metal story: I had a backyard aluminium foundry and I was poking at the melt inside the furnace, in a steel crucible, with a piece of steel bar. Molten aluminium is like water. It splashed and flew out, landing on my upper lip. I quickly brush it away but not before I get a second degree burn on my lip.
Yes, molten metal is scary and I learned a little more respect for it that day.
:((
Thats it .
Imma get my own safety ocean .
You cannot be to careful these days .
7:02 probably A-level
Oh it's not dangerous to touch, but inhaling that into your lungs is.😮😂
6:46
Throwing your used car batteries in the ocean is a safe and legal thrill.
I've boiled a battery once. i had left a NAPA battery charger plugged in to a 6v battery for hours, only i set the machine to 12v high on accident. i came back to the fill caps open and the electrolyte was spitting and popping. right when i got to the charger to shut it off, there was a big pop and a bunch of acid flew out. i was lucky and didn't get any on me though. the cherry on top was when i removed the vice grip holding one of the charger leads on, the handle snapped open and connected to the other terminal. there was a big pop and a spark and i got 6v DC at probably 100 amps through my hand for a second. luckily the vice grip just fell down and i wasn't stuck riding the lightning. don't use a battery charger that has a broken lead and is set for the wrong type of battery lol
Lol
i think the tape marks are hack marks, just used tape that instead of being thrown away is being applied to the table
A few years ago I built this electrolysis rig out of cut up soda bottles, water, a bucket, and thin hose (actually the insulator off a piece of wire). Very janky, but worked.
I used soda ash as the electrolyte, and I think it had lead electrodes, though they mighth've been stainless at that point.
Well, once I was playing around with a little HHO cannon, a thin pipe taped to _a fucking glass bottle_, I know right!
I filled the bottle from the other room with that thin hose, and lit it via the tube as well.
I did the stoichiometrics for butane and oxygen, mixed it using a soda bottle gasometer, and filled the glass cannon with the gas.
When it came to lighting it, all the water accumulated in the tube, because of all the HHO, blocked the flame, and the cannon didn't light.
So I went to the cannon to light it with the backup-piezo. I held my knee between the bottle and my face, just in case the bottle breaks.
Didn't light.
I went back to the other room, tried the tube ignition again, and BOOM! The bottle exploded with might, and I could hear thousands of little brown glass shards bouncing about my place. A bang so loud, I surely would have gone a bit deaf, and had lots of glass in my leg, were I still next to it. There're shrapnelmarks on the ceiling. Very powerful.
Omg the battery thing happened to my dad once. He said he was coated in lead acid battery paste. Not sure how he didn't get severely burned, or heavy metal poisoned.
Also ohhhh my god that molten steel story is terrifying
I've got a nice mercury story:
Imagine being in grade five, and your science teacher pulls out some magnets and a bag of iron filings - you are about to learn about magnetism no doubt.
We each get our magnet and divvied out pile of metal dust, and the teacher gives us a minute to play about with it before getting to the lesson at hand...
What catches my eye are hundreds of tiny ball-bearing things popping in and out of my pile of supposedly just iron, and I immediately started gathering them up in a folded piece of paper, using the magnet to separate the iron from this strangely frictionless metal (I distinctly remember these beads whizzing about on the paper as I tried to keep them away from the iron; I'm sure one or two got away)
So there's me just casually playing around with the coolest thing i'd seen in my life at the time - when the teacher looks at what i'm doing, and tells me to stop as usual. But as i'm wondering what I did wrong, he takes my materials away, then looks intently at everybody else's work before taking their materials away in a panic. So the lesson gets stripped of materials, and our teacher is gone for a while before coming back and explaining that the iron filings had been contaminated with mercury...
So for a long story short, 30 kids got exposed to a fair quantity of mercury - and I don't recall us all being forced to wash our hands either, so god knows how many of us suffered from mild mercury poisoning 😬
Yikes!
What solvent has a strong sweet synthetic blueberry odour like some water based markers?
I'd like to thank* you again for having a big heart which you openly express 💙
Thanks
Physical chemistry sounds like the required class I took in 9th grade, and its called that bc the first semester is focused on chemistry (I have a whole lab safety story from the final for that semester, if anyones interested), and the second semester is focused on physics. I could of course be wrong about this, but i figured i'd give my 2 cents on it
weirdest chemistry thing ive seen, friend spilled a drop of clove oil onto their mechanical keyboard. turns out clove oil is chemically similar to whatever solvent is used to dissolve those soft-touch rubber coatings on mechanical keyboards owned by friends. of all the oils to drip on there lol wild shit
Chlorine clouds in the bathroom are bad .
So is Ammonia .
The combination is of course , worse .
There are documented cases of people being asphyxiated by their own flatulence .
Maybe TC could do another tier ranking , this time of noxious clouds likely to be encountered in a bathroom .
Old people skatole-bombing the bathroom would be up there
nooo i ran out of chempilations
That means you have to become a patron ;) - there are 4 patreon exclusive ones on there!
I like the new thumbnails
Thanks :)