Reacting to Your Amazing Comments

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  • Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
  • In this video, I show some of your greatest comments!!!
    This is the very first chempilation! Check out even more Chempilations!
    • Chempilations
    / thatchemist
    Community Discord - / discord

КОМЕНТАРІ • 518

  • @adrianhenle
    @adrianhenle 2 роки тому +791

    I worked at a synchrotron. A contractor was installing some new equipment and thought the tamper-proof screws on the beamline radiation shielding were some kind of funky rivets, so he drilled them out. Removing the panel like that tripped a safety interlock that initiated an immediate beam dump, ruining all active experiments and causing massive schedule chaos as it takes a LONG time to get the beam up to its full operating power. Around the same time, someone got trapped inside the cyclotron down the road--they were almost exposed to high vacuum. The Department of Energy mandated a fresh round of safety training for the entire facility.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +155

      oh my gosh!

    • @OtakuUnitedStudio
      @OtakuUnitedStudio 2 роки тому +106

      HOLY CRAP. That second guy could have ended up an actual horror story.

    • @mastershooter64
      @mastershooter64 2 роки тому +45

      Damn, that could've been like the anatoli burgoski story

    • @michaelwerkov3438
      @michaelwerkov3438 2 роки тому +16

      Can i just say... good. Lol. Shouldnt the contractor be able to like... verify first lol

    • @Colonies_Dev
      @Colonies_Dev 2 роки тому +7

      😂😂 but how did somebody get inside the vacuum section while it was running??

  • @JPLYUKI
    @JPLYUKI 2 роки тому +663

    Picture this: It's your high school's chemistry lab test, and you have an unknown organic acid. You're tasked with determining its identity by titrating it and preparing a buffer solution, and for the first time in your high school days, you have to prepare everything from scratch. Wow, this'll be a tough lab!
    But then an idiot in the front row (me, actually) uncorks his vial, huffs the fumes up his right nostril, and exclaims, "It's acetic acid!" And to your absolute horror, the rest of the class uncorks their vials and proceeds to determine the organic acid's identity in the same manner.

    • @CATASTEROID934
      @CATASTEROID934 2 роки тому +255

      Who got the butyric acid vials

    • @milesmccollough5507
      @milesmccollough5507 2 роки тому +190

      okay, this is my absolute favorite one. silly enough to laugh at whilst showcasing some very real dangers.

    • @Thaumius
      @Thaumius 2 роки тому +114

      Work Smarter not Harder, hopefully those students didnt get a 0 for cheating

    • @californium-2526
      @californium-2526 2 роки тому +123

      Determination by inhalation, the best method to determine organic acids.

    • @OutbackCatgirl
      @OutbackCatgirl 2 роки тому +37

      oh god, my sides

  • @eier5472
    @eier5472 2 роки тому +249

    Some people in our pharmacy department were definitely guilty of pouring organosulfur compounds down the drain. We noticed everytime because our drains are similarly interconnected and every once in a while the entire place would either smell like a fart or trigger an alarm because someone assumed it was a gas leak

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +31

      dang

    • @milesmccollough5507
      @milesmccollough5507 2 роки тому +72

      why i shouldn’t have to follow WM protocol:
      - i don’t want to
      - the sink is RIGHT THERE

    • @lloydevans2900
      @lloydevans2900 2 роки тому +27

      In the lab I used to work in, one of the research groups was doing organometallic chemistry with uranium (depleted uranium sourced from BNFL), and one of the weirdest compounds made was a funky uranium pentalene complex. Under certain conditions, this compound could pull the oxygen out of the middle of diethyl ether and leave butane behind, and at the time (this was 20 years ago), nobody understood how or why this worked. One of the follow-up experiments to try and find out was to replace the diethyl ether with diethyl sulfide, to see if the same uranium compound could do the analogous reaction, pulling the sulfur out of the middle, again leaving butane behind. This meant that the unlucky postdoc charged with doing this experiment had to use neat diethyl sulfide as the solvent!
      Anyway, after doing the experiment, the solvent had to be evaporated off under vacuum, and collected in a liquid nitrogen cold trap, which is the normal way of evaporating off solvents when you are doing organometallic chemistry with extremely air sensitive compounds. As soon as this was done, they removed the trap while the contents were still frozen solid, and then left it in the back of one of the fumehoods to warm up and evaporate. This was somewhere between 20 and 30 mL of diethyl sulfide, merrily wafting its way up the fumehood for the rest of the day and probably well into the evening too.
      Unfortunately, this was a warm and not particularly windy day, and the little wind that there was carried the outflow from the fumehood towards the residential side of campus, where all the halls of residence were. We only found out the next day that Transco (the national emergency service for reporting gas leaks) had received hundreds of calls from the student residences the previous afternoon and evening. Their engineers had been running all over that side of campus, presumably with much confusion and head scratching, trying to determine the source of an apparently massive gas leak. Turns out that the smell of diethyl sulfide is almost identical to tetrahydrothiophene, the latter being the compound added to natural gas to give it a smell for identifying gas leaks.

  • @marc-andreservant201
    @marc-andreservant201 2 роки тому +157

    My high school chemistry textbook stated that acids tend to taste sour and bases tend to taste bitter. The very next line warned us to not use this test and buy pH indicator strips instead.

    • @marc-andreservant201
      @marc-andreservant201 2 роки тому +43

      In case you're wondering, my school was lame and we only ever got to handle extremely dilute solutions. Which was probably for the better.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +30

      Wise

  • @MadChemistVEVO
    @MadChemistVEVO 2 роки тому +184

    Me, a theoretical computational chemist watching from above: Pathetic. 😂😂❤️
    The most dangerous thing that had happened to me was that one time when I almost spilled soda over my keyboard 😂😂

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +26

      Haha

    • @mastershooter64
      @mastershooter64 2 роки тому +5

      Lmao! hell yea! theorist gang!!

    • @tylisirn
      @tylisirn Рік тому +11

      No, no, you almost spilled an aqueous solution of dilute phosphoric acid and carbonic acid, among other things, onto your keyboard. ;)
      (The exact acid may differ. Cola type sodas usually have phosphoric acid, fruit type sodas usually have citric and/or malic acid.)

    • @official-obama
      @official-obama 5 місяців тому

      don't you need to know the structure of chemicals?

  • @chemicalboy2106
    @chemicalboy2106 2 роки тому +285

    My prof told us a story about a acid water mixing accident he had as a undergrad. He was trying to scrub something with chromic acid. He added water and the stuff violently boiled and shot out of the container pretty much soaking him (Thank god he didn't get seriously hurt) . He then immediately threw water on himself an and got rid of all his cloths leading to him running around naked and torpefied searching for the next toilette, where he spent about 40 minutes until someone came in and he could tell the guy to get his Lab TA.
    Tldr: our professor almost killed himself with chromic acid and ran around naked in a Lab building.

  • @jmwm6229
    @jmwm6229 2 роки тому +157

    So I did in fact work at a cyclotron which produced isotopes for medical imaging and radiotherapy. I worked in the life sciences division where we handle liquid sources of radiation (radioactive ions dissolved in solvent). This makes it quite easy to get contaminated so we had lots of training and measures in place to make sure contamination wasn’t spread. During training we heard about a guy who got his hands contaminated, didn’t wash them, and went to the bathroom. Essentially he got radioactive material on his member and had to be scrubbed clean by the safety team. That was enough to scare everyone into being pretty careful.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +72

      Maybe it was all part of his plan…

    • @chair547
      @chair547 2 роки тому +33

      Don't kinkshame.

  • @AkerreBeHere
    @AkerreBeHere 2 роки тому +218

    This was great! I think there's a certain morbid curiosity to hearing others' chemistry horror stories... but also it makes you feel less stupid about your own mistakes

    • @AlvaroGC_2001
      @AlvaroGC_2001 2 роки тому +8

      Morbius

    • @1brytol
      @1brytol 2 роки тому +7

      Morbid? Morbin 😈

    • @garfield1245
      @garfield1245 2 роки тому

      @@AlvaroGC_2001 Morb this, Morb that... How about you get morb bitches?

  • @macmees2477
    @macmees2477 2 роки тому +179

    The “tasting base bath” story made me think of the time I tasted hydrochloric acid.
    During one of our first chemistry labs in high school we had to pipet and titrate 15ml of HCl. However, the pipetting device only went up to 10ml. So our teacher told us it was fine to pipet by mouth, causing me to get a mouth full of hydrochloric acid. Luckily it was only maybe 0.01 M(olar). I washed with lots of water and was all fine, though it did taste awful. Fun fact, some time after that when I first tasted beer I said it tasted like hydrochloric acid, admittedly, it was Heineken…

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +41

      Hahaha

    • @Thaumius
      @Thaumius 2 роки тому +11

      you could have pipetted 10 mL + 5 mL by adjusting the device.

    • @ciarangale4738
      @ciarangale4738 2 роки тому +7

      I just... drank hcl of that strength once. Not lots

    • @Kieselmeister
      @Kieselmeister Рік тому +14

      Pretty sure every human being that has lived past their first week has tasted hydrochloric acid solution at some point, given that HCl is a major component of gastric digestion & vomit generally has a Ph of 1 to 2 (the stomach secretes HCl at 0.16 mol/L, and it gets diluted to somewhere between .1 and .01 depending on other factors.)

    • @angusmatheson8906
      @angusmatheson8906 Рік тому +4

      Jesus christ you tasted HCL BEFORE you tasted BEER?!

  • @At0mix
    @At0mix 2 роки тому +90

    Back when I worked on bio-based paints I was doing workup on some natural blue tetrapyrroles dissolved in water. It had taken weeks to extract and purify half a gram from the bacteria that produced it. We had a shitty rotavap so I decided to evaporate the last few milliliters of water by hand under mild nitrogen flow. Unfortunately, someone had turned the flow regulator all the way up and I forgot to check it. And to make matters worse, I opened the fumehood window quite far because "it's just water and non-toxic paint, right?" So a split second after I opened the nitrogen line, the entire fumehood got an involuntary paint job and I looked like a depressed smurf contemplating his life choices.

  • @efo19wire
    @efo19wire 2 роки тому +71

    back in undergrad, the grad student i was working with was like “get the stir bar out of this” (freshly titrated e. coli minimal media, so it wasn’t dangerous) and i just fuckin reached in with my gloved hand and grabbed it. thankfully we were going to autoclave it next so it didn’t matter but lmao the second i put my hand in there i was like “i have made a mistake”

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +13

      Oop

    • @californium-2526
      @californium-2526 2 роки тому +21

      Magnets never existed. Just use your hands, -what can go wrong?-

    • @dynadwynn
      @dynadwynn Рік тому +1

      That's why we now prepare all media by boiling and shaking in reused stericup bottles 😂 works!

  • @robertlapointe4093
    @robertlapointe4093 2 роки тому +83

    Glad you found my earlier comment amusing. Your comments on not being shy about using the safety shower (in relation to the sulfuric acid spill in the segment at 6:00), is spot on. During the 16 years I was at the plant site where the Ph2O incident occurred, there was one death. An operator was steam cleaning a crusty pump in the 2,4-dinitrophenol plant, when he uncovered a small corrosion hole and was sprayed with product solution. He bypassed the local safety shower in favor of the more private locker room facilities. The extra time (probably less than a minute) allowed him to receive a lethal dose via skin absorption.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +31

      that is awful :(

    • @buixote
      @buixote 2 роки тому +14

      I think maybe regular tests of the showers should be conducted... just to get people used to it; so they don't hesitate and die. On a lighter note, our E-Shower in College O-Chem had no drain. The lab was on the 2nd Floor, and I thought repeatedly about faking it, just to see the water flow down the stairs! ;-)

    • @lawrencecalablaster568
      @lawrencecalablaster568 Рік тому +3

      oh no 🖤

    • @jasperbarnett6819
      @jasperbarnett6819 Рік тому

      ​@@buixotenot just to get people used to it, but to make sure that a) the shower is still functional and b) that the water in the pipes is at least mostly clean. As a club safety officer in undergrad I had a couple interesting experiences with safety shower and eye wash station testing. The nearest ones to the club lab hadn't been tested in over a decade, and the first time I tested them, the water was literally brown with rust particulates for about 5 seconds. After that I made sure to test them at least quarterly, just in case.

  • @therobotFrom94
    @therobotFrom94 2 роки тому +76

    I accidentally gave my lab partner a panic attack just after they had come back into the lab from having one.
    I agreed to watch their reflux and offered a measuring cylinder to them, thinking it was clean.
    It was not. I don't remember the exact contents but it reacted with a loud, high pitched bang and I was mortified seeing my friend's face in horror

  • @STKhero
    @STKhero 2 роки тому +90

    I like the argument of t-butanol makes t-butylamine a tertiary amine, but on the contrary if triethylamine is a tertiary amine, does this make dimethyl ether a secondary alcohol?

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +38

      This comment will DEFINITELY be in the next episode!

    • @Jokke13th
      @Jokke13th 2 роки тому +8

      That's pretty funny. Ngl

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +16

      the irony is I forgot to include this...

    • @STKhero
      @STKhero 2 роки тому +3

      @@That_Chemist No worries, I've been enjoying the content a lot

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +8

      I remembered this time though - it will be in #4

  • @pmathewizard
    @pmathewizard 2 роки тому +45

    I'm still serious on determining and catalogizing the strength of carrots as a reducing agent on research

  • @antares8826
    @antares8826 2 роки тому +37

    I really hope that when I do my Phd in a year that I will have a chance to use carrots for a reduction. It would be hilarious to write in a scientific paper that one of the steps was just dumping my lunch in the flask to get the reaction going.

  • @jogandsp
    @jogandsp 2 роки тому +34

    When my grad student mentor was an undergrad, HIS grad student mentor synthesized an artificial amino acid that had a high nitrogen content. Scraped the vial to get more yield... you know how this goes. Violently detonated. Blew out the sash of the fume hood they were working in AND the one six feet behind them. My mentor had glass shards embedded in him. His mentor lost fingers.

  • @Thaumius
    @Thaumius 2 роки тому +52

    The funniest thing ive seen occured after a physical chemistry experiment. In our high school lab there is a falling ball viscometer that we were learning to determine the viscosity of different solvents. After the experiment, one student decides to dump his solvent into the organic waste WITH the ball. With the teachers recommendation to replace the ball, they tried to do the experiments with other balls but they were not reproductible with the other results (having different materials and diameters). The lab technicians spent most of the lab day filtering the organic waste container to get it back the ball. That ball costs nearly 600$ alone.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +7

      Oh no!

    • @defenestrated23
      @defenestrated23 2 роки тому +24

      Our cans all had a mesh basket as a flame arrester which doubled as a catch for "oops there was a stir bar in that flask"

    • @andresmartinezramos7513
      @andresmartinezramos7513 2 роки тому +10

      @@defenestrated23 MIA stir bars is a really big problem

    • @WineScrounger
      @WineScrounger Рік тому

      What was it made of?

  • @nickfinch8182
    @nickfinch8182 2 роки тому +54

    Rookie mistake time:
    I was working as an undergrad in a high pressure combustion lab, doing combustion tests of nitromethane. The one chamber we have can pressurize to 50,000psi. To place test-tubes into this chamber, there is this massive plug at the bottom that is raised into the chamber by a monstrosity of winch and pulley system. The plug itself sat upon a spring-supported platform, which sat upon another platform which was the platform that was winched up into the system. Although this chamber does have an optical port, where you could in theory use a laser for ignition, that functionality was not in place yet. Instead, to ignite the test-tube of nitromethane, we used a small piece of a plastic explosive, which would be ignited using a piece of nichrome wire held by alligator clips. At some point during the plug insertion process, this wire came out of the alligator clips. I didn’t find out until after pressurizing to 14,000psi, a process that took the better part of all day. That was a long day.

    • @TempestsFist
      @TempestsFist Рік тому

      High pressure anything is extremely terrifying. Honestly more scary than acids or bases most of the time.

  • @loho1125
    @loho1125 2 роки тому +34

    In the very beginning of chemistry classes at school, my teacher assigned us the following task: come up with a series of reactions to convert Calcium metal into Calcium Carbonate with the help of water, vinegar and baking soda. When we were done, Prof wanted to show us how Calcium oxide reacts with water. He took a miniscule amount of CaO and put it into a tiny erlenmeyer flask with water, a thermometer and indicator. As expected, the temperature rose and the indicator became pink. Then, for comparison, he wanted to show us the same thing but with Calcium Carbonate. He used a second erlenmeyer flask which was more than half full with water but otherwise the same. Well, then he put a heaped teaspoon of the "Calcium Carbonate" in there and much to his surprise, the mixture in the flask suddenly boiled and then it more or less spewed its probably boiling-hot content over his labcoat and table. It was then that he realised it was the wrong bottle that he took the stuff out of. The funniest thing was that before the whole spoon went into the flask, some of the compound fell into the water and it did turn slightly pink, but he didn't see and we were all like "uhhh...". He took off his coat immediately and everything was fine, mostly because it was a small flask and therefore not much content. But yeah, he very impressively demonstrated why it is important to work percise, accurate and cautious🤣

  • @Drakeblood97
    @Drakeblood97 2 роки тому +55

    I've made a couple funny mistakes in the first lab I ever worked at. This one time I was cleaning out a 250L bioreactor with some glacial acetic acid and I accidentally poured way too much of it into the tank. This resulted in the entire lab being filled with acetic acid fumes which were so strong it felt like inhaling needles with every breath. I'll never underestimate that stuff again.
    Another time I was spinning my samples down in a benchtop centrifuge, and as I was listening to it spin up I started browsing on my phone. All of a sudden it just starts loudly, violently shuddering across the benchtop which scared the piss out of me. I hit the emergency stop and waited for it to slow down enough to open, and when I did I saw it was full of broken plastic and had gashes all over the walls. What happened was a plastic well plate (that I wasn't using) was not situated properly on the swing out attachment and slipped off as it was spinning up to ~3,000RPM. It still worked afterwards.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +5

      yikes!

    • @Oxaphosphetane
      @Oxaphosphetane 2 роки тому +10

      You haven't worked in a biochem lab if you haven't had a centrifuge mishap. I once witnessed someone start a floor centrifuge unbalanced. The noise was terrifying.

  • @eggplantlover6662
    @eggplantlover6662 2 роки тому +36

    The best way to learn what a synproportionation/conproportionation reaction is, is to pour a bunch of Sulfuric Acid and Sodium Thiosulfate solution down the drain at the same time in 1st semester lab and inhaling a good lung of SO2. Dont be mad at me for the disposal, I was young and the instructions said to just pour the solutions down the drain with water after finishing. I just turned on the water for two minutes and then left so I would not get in trouble.

    • @stefangadshijew1682
      @stefangadshijew1682 2 роки тому +16

      It's absolutely on the organizers of the lab to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen, so it would probably have been them to get in trouble if you told.
      Where I'm working, I'm absolutely not allowed to put anything down the drain except when washing my hands. Honestly, I think this is good practice, I make sure to deactivate all my stuff before discarding it in my waste containers after having learned it the hard way by pouring sodium carbonate solution in my acidic waste container.

  • @Vracaum
    @Vracaum 2 роки тому +32

    In Undergrad, I was doing solvent screening for the reaction of fructose to HMF using HCl. Our professor told us to using a solvent called 2-methylfuran. Little did we know this solvent polymerize with acid. The result was an entire condenser and flask filled with black resin.
    It took a 3-month acetone/methanol bath to take it off. I think we made a teflon derivative without any fluor, we should have made a patent for that

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +7

      Wow that’s a slow process!

    • @zockertwins
      @zockertwins 2 роки тому +2

      A good sovent for polymers is usually dmf

  • @custos3249
    @custos3249 2 роки тому +30

    Speaking of accidents, reminds me of a story I'm pretty sure is just one that old chemists pass around to scare students due to the xenomorph blood-like reaction depicted. Anyway - sorry, gotta put my old man hat on - it was 1999 when the internet was still barely a thing, and that South Park joke about Iowa was very true. After a slow class trying to teach a group of 8th graders how fun balancing equations is, my old high school chem teacher told us about some outmoded procedures in the 70s, namely mouth pipetting. And you almost certainly know where this is going. I can't recall what reagent he specified, but a female student was pipetting some solution and sucked a bit too vigorously. The 70s were a different time. Though she spit it out as soon as she realized, by the time she got to a sink to wash, her front teeth had already begun to puff up like nixtamalized corn. Dispite the washes, by the time paramedics arrived, her top two incisors had started sloughing off. Turned out he genuinely was a former student of my same school, and that was why the school said we weren't allowed to pipette our own nitric acid to put on pennies the next day.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +4

      It sucks to suck (but fr, sad to hear)

  • @SuperJibulus
    @SuperJibulus 2 роки тому +45

    My biggest balls up is just a simple sentence, no big story:
    Steel + concentrated nitric acid 💀
    Fizzy

  • @highvoltagemayhem3345
    @highvoltagemayhem3345 2 роки тому +13

    So back in high school my chemistry teacher asked me to prepare a lab for our class. At the time we were supposed to be learning about pressure and vacuum etc. so I thought it would be a great idea to bring a decent size 2 stage vacuum pump in and a giant bell jar and hopefully boggle their minds with basic physics. As I was finishing up the vacuum hoses and fittings the teacher and the schools safety officer came in to see what I was making for the class. I thought wow here's my chance to impress him since he's also the history teacher. I placed a buzzer in the jar and then reached for the control panel completely forgetting that I had left the vent cap still on the pump... anyhow as soon as the safety officer leaned over to observe BOOM that cap made its rapid vertical ascent grazing his hat and proceeded to bounce off the ceiling and walls just like the physics in cartoons. The man just stared for a hot minute and then said "your doing great" and left the room. I certainly made history at the school being the first student to shoot at a safety officer...

  • @chrisboyall8602
    @chrisboyall8602 2 роки тому +12

    Fuck a publication, I want to be in a that chemist comment awards video

  • @mcb187
    @mcb187 2 роки тому +15

    One of the students in my HS lab class misunderstood the disposal directions, and poured HCL down the sink, then the sodium bicarbonate solution down the same sink. Have you ever seen a sink geyser? I have! Granted, it wasn’t very big, but it made quite a few loud pops, and filled the bottom part of the sink with bubbles. I’m sure the plumbing loved that as well…

  • @MySuperhappyfuntime
    @MySuperhappyfuntime 2 роки тому +26

    Videos coming out at a serious cadence. They're very good

  • @TinySpongey
    @TinySpongey 2 роки тому +35

    In school chemistry class about 40 years ago we were making soap. Usual stuff sodium hydroxide, an appropriate oil and some heat. After the experiment is finished one guy decides to see how well it will wash his hands. The "soap" contained a fair bit of unreacted sodium hydroxide and his hands didn't like it one bit. Fortunately no lasting damage done other than embarassment.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +6

      haha

    • @linuspoindexter106
      @linuspoindexter106 2 роки тому +3

      Yeah, lye soap needs to "cure" for a while before it's fit to use.

    • @lsswappedcessna
      @lsswappedcessna 2 роки тому +1

      I remember HS chemistry fondly. Working with lye scared the piss out of me on account of our only PPE being safety goggles and gloves (under-funded school in rural Kentucky, so what do you expect?), though, thankfully the teacher was able to help dispose of it safely.

  • @trappedunderground
    @trappedunderground 2 роки тому +24

    In undergrad, my roundbottom slipped off the rotovap and spilled all of its contents into the water. I got my professor (he wasn't angry at me, he later told me that accidents happen and not to worry) to dispose of the water. He took the bath out of the fume hood, and pretty much carelessly dumped all of the water into a container and quite a bit of it spilled on the floor. Turns out that there was a lachrymator that had spilled into the water bath and now it was all over the lab, so everyone's eyes started getting teary. The lab was shut down for the rest of the week. I still take full responsibility for that incident to this day...

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +2

      Yeah, stuff like this happens

    • @yuriikovalov84
      @yuriikovalov84 2 роки тому

      Wooow... and I thought when I spilled my product in rotary evap. it was bad

    • @xephael3485
      @xephael3485 Рік тому

      That's a pretty tame story compared to your meth making ones... 🤪

  • @ricardsjaunzems2364
    @ricardsjaunzems2364 2 роки тому +62

    Man, the worst mistake I've made in the lab was when I was connecting a SO₂ gas cylinder, I knocked over some other researchers vial immediately after she told me not to. The worst thing that came from it, thankfully, was an angry glare, as her product was pretty viscous.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +17

      You got lucky

    • @Kloashut
      @Kloashut 2 роки тому +6

      LOL. I can imagine. A former Phd in my lab wanted to pick up a vial at the end of her bench. I warned her to be careful as I had samples there which took me weeks to synthesize & purify[morpholine dions]. Her reply: Ah hush...........I'll manage. Not...she flipped over 2 of my costly products in rb flasks. I think she didnt dare to look me in the eye for quite a few weeks 😂

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +1

      @@Kloashut F

  • @danielschuett
    @danielschuett 2 роки тому +17

    As reading all the comments on the other videos would take way too long, a best of is really nice to watch.
    And I can contribute a few rookie anecdotes, too (sadly, nothing more advanced since I did not finish university, but I still fondly remember the time, and have not lost interest completely, hence watching chemistry videos on youtube occasionally).
    1. Hot Glassware: When still in high school, when entering the chemistry room/lab I notice the teacher burning out some glassware with a Bunsen burner, but don't really think much about it. Some time later, when everyone is asked to get some materials, and I think that funnel sitting on the teacher's desk looks much cleaner than those in the cupboard, so I try to grab it and "psssh", I can hear and smell a bit of my finger getting burnt. I was too embarressed to say anything and had a quite painful white spot for some time, luckily nothing worse.
    2. In probably the first or second organic laboratory session at university, some of us had the great idea to share a large 2l beaker to collect waste. Shortly after pouring some solvent (more than 20 years later, I don't remember what it was) into the beaker, it started to get hot and froth. Someone else had put something containing H2SO4 into it earlier and I was barely able to make it to an ice dispenser and back with a bowl of ice to cool the beaker down, preventing it from spilling its contents into the fume hood.
    3. Sometime later, you'd think I'd have learned that organic liquids and sulphuric acid can react violently, but I had forgotten about that and was reminded rather unpleasantly. I had a similar reaction when adding something to a flask with H2SO4 in it. The second lesson I learned that day was not to put your face in front of the flask's opening. Some of the contents of the flask sprayed out directly into my face. I asked someone to wipe my face while I was pulling my gloves off before I could wash myself, and I had lots of small marks on my face for a few weeks.
    4. And another simple mistake: If you've done a reaction using Na, check if there's anything of it left in the flask before washing it in the sink.
    Back then the rule was to bring a cake for the lab assistants if you did something stupid, and I had to bring a few. I probably should have taken the time to step out of the lab and drink something more often, as a whole afternoon without hydration in a warm lab can really affect concentration.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +5

      Yeah dehydration is always an issue - lab assistants definitely deserve many cakes!!!

  • @sazxcdewq123
    @sazxcdewq123 2 роки тому +10

    Hey, would you make a video about that relatively newly discovered pentafluorosulfanyl (R-SF5) group? It's pretty crazy.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +3

      Yeah I mean I could do a video, I know all the synthetic methodology and I’ve met all of the people working on it, but I just don’t think it would be a very popular video. Maybe I will sort out how to set up patreon stretch goals and then I can justify regularly making more lecture content

    • @defenestrated23
      @defenestrated23 2 роки тому

      Hey, 3teeth fan!

    • @sazxcdewq123
      @sazxcdewq123 2 роки тому

      @@defenestrated23 Yeah, I listen to quite varied electronic music. Want to hear about it?

  • @spiderdude2099
    @spiderdude2099 2 роки тому +17

    So, I have a scar from a lab accident, but the way I got it was totally stupid and I’m still upset it even happened.
    So, I’m running a nitration, the nasty kind where you need really concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids mixed together then you add your product and for this one in particular I then had to heat to 90C. I was wear all my PPE, gloves, lab coat, even lab goggles for face protection. Well, the nitration is humming along nicely and to monitor the rxn, I had been taking small samples of the rxn mix with a glass pipette tip which I would dilute in a vial and run TLC to check the progress. The way I got my sample with the pipette tip was to turn off heating, remove the condenser quickly, and dip the pipette in. Well, one of the times I tried doing this, I reached for the condenser and in this particular setup, I had to reach my arms quite a bit into the hood to undo the clamp and lift the condenser. As I did so, the sleeves of the lab coat I was wearing rode up exposing the TINIEST sliver of my bare skin between where the glove ended and my lab coat sleeve ended. The second that area of skin was exposed, a rogue droplet of the near-boiling nitration mix fell from the bottom of the condenser, you guessed it, right on that part of my arm. I IMMEDIATELY went to the sink which was very close by and rinse my arm for 15 mins. The acid was probably in contact with my arm for no more than 5 seconds, I moved incredibly fast. Nevertheless, I still have a small oval shaped scar the size of a pea on my arm.
    I was really frustrated because I had been wearing all my PPE, it just so happened that my lab coat sleeves combined with how I had to stretch my arms to reach the clamps led to a very small hole in my defenses.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +11

      I just relived your pain and terror in reading this - glad that you weren’t seriously injured!

    • @spiderdude2099
      @spiderdude2099 2 роки тому +4

      @@That_Chemist lol, yeah it was so dumb, just a stray drop off the bottom of the condenser as I was lifting it on the only section of my body it could have harmed me (-_____-)

    • @defenestrated23
      @defenestrated23 2 роки тому +3

      Swiss cheese safety theory in a microcosm right here.

  • @CarterColeisInfamous
    @CarterColeisInfamous 2 роки тому +4

    The CSB has a video about a heat gun causing explosion and deaths

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +4

      oh yeah boy, the bucket of resin starts a fire in a (flammable?) silo

    • @CarterColeisInfamous
      @CarterColeisInfamous 2 роки тому +3

      @@That_Chemist that's the one

    • @OutbackCatgirl
      @OutbackCatgirl 2 роки тому +2

      god yeah that one was just... oh god, what a way to go.
      Honestly I've been shocked by how much their animations have improved especially recently, just, damn, they hired a damn good animation team

  • @penteractgaming
    @penteractgaming 2 роки тому +6

    losing your eyes: just a little foolish

  • @realstonehead3436
    @realstonehead3436 2 роки тому +5

    One day our teacher wanted to show us some Phosphorous. After taking it out of the flask it of course self ignited and the entire building was evacuated.

  • @yurirego9155
    @yurirego9155 2 роки тому +8

    Remembering the day I decided to wash some glassware I left out in the fumehood the day before. As soon as I’ve put them in water, my eyes remembered me what I’ve forgotten: they had benzyl bromide on them and my eyes started burning like I’ve rubbed habaneros on them.
    Even washing them through on the washer, my eyes ached for like an hour.

  • @lucifergraves1964
    @lucifergraves1964 2 роки тому +3

    Putting things down the drain you say? *Hides mechanic shop logo and takes off matco hat* I know nothing of what you speak of

  • @elo5175
    @elo5175 2 роки тому +8

    This reminds me of a Mistake I made while doing qualitative Analysis and we were without a Supervisor. I was just done boiling my Mixture of Salts in conc. Hcl (33%). I then went and poured it into some centrifuge Glases(acid Was still hot and i was under pressure beacause my time was running out hence the hurry) to help the stuff settle by putting it in a centrifuge for a minute. so i picked up the Glases with the hot acid in them,2 per Hand, while wearing acid resistant gloves, which were wet, so 3 of the 4 Glases, slipped out my Hands, hit the bottom Part of the bench and broke spraying my pants with hot conc acid(was wearing sweatpants altough you really shouldnt). We do not have a safety shower in our lab so i ran too nearest sink and then washed my legs one by one After taking my pants off. So there i am, in the Lab, without pants or a Coat, right as the Supervisor walks in.
    Yeah it was really embarrassing to explain, but my legs were fine, my pants had a bunch of holes in them and i had to throw them out.
    Also dryed my pants using a heat gun, that was fun.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +7

      wow - working in a lab without a safety shower is a no-no!!!

    • @elo5175
      @elo5175 2 роки тому +1

      @@That_Chemist Since it is "only a school lab" we dont, at least According to guidelines, have to have a safety shower. We are usually not working with super dangerous stuff since we are all Lab Assistants in training. But i would still rather have one. On a less serious note, we do have a river running right besides our lab (bout 1 minute on foot), when we were all first shown around, we were told that if there is a big spill/fire we could just jump into the river and be fine.

  • @gorderumsi6424
    @gorderumsi6424 Рік тому +3

    14:31 im pretty sure we went to the same high-school and the teacher still tells that story.... or this has just happened more than once...

  • @1brytol
    @1brytol 2 роки тому +3

    1:58
    When I started doing chem, I suppose permanganate ion levels in my cities sewage fuckin' doubled.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому

      F

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 2 роки тому

      they actually use permanganates in some kinds of water treatment. They can screw up and make 'purple water' which somehow isn't dangerous, just nasty as hell, though it's so obvious nobody drinks it

  • @lithiumferrate6960
    @lithiumferrate6960 2 роки тому +8

    Has anyone tried dihydropyridine-pyridinium redox thing that is so prevalent in biology? Ya know the whole NAD and NADH thing.

    • @efo19wire
      @efo19wire 2 роки тому +3

      iirc, nad and nadh can’t do much without an enzyme to get the redox reaction moving between the desired starting material and nad/nadh. maybe there’s some special in vitro cases and conditions where it can do things solo, but it can’t catalyze stuff alone in a biological setting

    • @eggplantlover6662
      @eggplantlover6662 2 роки тому +2

      Hanztsch esters use that motif to act as an organic H2 equivalent. They are used together with an acid catalyst to reduce different functional groups. So yeah, that has been tried.

  • @kingnotail3838
    @kingnotail3838 2 роки тому +5

    I was the base bath in mouth one...thanks for putting it the thumbnail! Love this channel!

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +1

      Thank you for your legendary comment ;)

    • @OutbackCatgirl
      @OutbackCatgirl 2 роки тому

      what did it taste like

    • @kingnotail3838
      @kingnotail3838 2 роки тому +2

      @@OutbackCatgirl Bad....can't really describe it any more than that, just bad...

  • @joemackey8859
    @joemackey8859 2 роки тому +4

    When I was in the Navy my ship was going through a reactor refuel and I was restricted to the ship we had our morning muster in the usual place and halfway through rolecall someone made us aware that there was an unshielded reactor core off to our left. Lol of course they said we should be fine. Still it's been 20 plus years and no cancer yet.

  • @linuspoindexter106
    @linuspoindexter106 2 роки тому +4

    I only have one radiological accident story, and luckily it didn't happen to me directly. I was working as a bench chemist at a very large company. One of the other chemists was using 14C-labelled acetyl chloride to label a compound. The reagent came in a sealed glass ampule containing about a gram of the acyl chloride. His method of opening a glass ampule was to chill it way down then touch the scored neck of the ampule with a hot glass stirring rod; the stress caused by the temp imbalance would snap the ampule open on the score mark. BTW I've never heard of this method before or since. He was wearing ppe; safety specs, lab coat, latex gloves, and company-mandated steel-toed shoes. This time instead of cleanly snapping the ampule open, the whole ampule disintegrated in his gloved hand. He knew he was in trouble immediately of course, so he stripped off his gloves and lab coat and went to the shower/locker room down the hall (did I mention this was a VERY large industrial chemical enterprise?) There he showered off and the rad safety people came and scrubbed him down with borax soap. His clothes were bagged and I assume they are in a hot landfill somewhere. Even though the dude was nominally protected by his glove, some 14C acetyl chloride made it through to his hand, then into him. He had to be monitored for a few weeks until his urine cooled off, and he had to wear a cotton glove on the affected hand. This was during the heyday of Michael Jackson and his one glove, so he endured a lot of jokes about that. Eventually all the 14C washed out of him and as far as I know he was none the worse for it. Good times.

  • @alex15295
    @alex15295 2 роки тому +4

    We have separate sinks for chlorinated and non-chlorinated waste

  • @dapossum9495
    @dapossum9495 2 роки тому +5

    I think my worst mistake was shaking a huge solvent waste drum to see if I had enough space to dump in more. A drop of the waste that was mostly dcm went right under my glasses and into my eye. I ran to the nearest sink and rinsed my eye for about 15min. I really thought I was going to lose sight from that eye, but I was fine. Just a scary experience.
    PS: There was also phenol and a bunch of other nasty stuff in that waste

  • @S.park.y
    @S.park.y 2 роки тому +3

    The I F$&@ed up and here’s how series is great. My stomach hurts
    Suggestion, The Ruh Roh series

  • @8bits59
    @8bits59 2 роки тому +4

    DCM burns are just annoying. I once, right after a glove change, was prepping a mobile phase for a DCM+MeOH column and managed to spill a small amount of solvent onto my glove. It wasn't even enough to be even anything to normally worry about, just enough to prompt a glove change. Apparently, though, my fresh-from-the-box gloves had a pinhole in there somewhere, and immediately I felt liquid soak into the glove. In the mere moments between liquid contact and the classic burning sensation that DCM has, my stomach felt like it dropped to the floor. And then, naturally, the chemical burn started. After quite literally ripping my glove off and rinsing with copious amounts of high-pressure water (since DCM isn't miscible, you have to compensate by basically blasting it off), there was a streak of red, partially defatted skin between the ring and middle fingers of my left hand for a couple of weeks. VWR made the gloves, for those curious, they were just standard medium-size nitrile examination gloves.
    Moral of the story: don't rely on gloves to be bulletproof, since sometimes they can't even be DCM-proof.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +3

      Yeah some people have said that they didn’t have issues with DCM/chloroform on their skin, but I know that I definitely have

    • @anon-rf5sx
      @anon-rf5sx 2 роки тому +1

      Remember the Karen Wetterhahn story. You must never trust your gloves blindly.

    • @defenestrated23
      @defenestrated23 2 роки тому

      DCM will go straight through most nitrile gloves. You need something like Silverstar gloves (some kinda mylar) or polyethylene with nitrile over it. Mostly we just used nitrile and ripped the glove off if we got a spill. I never had a problem with dcm, I've literally had my hand doused with it numerous times, I feel a warm sensation but no damage. I can see how others would react severely.

  • @nitroadshadow4667
    @nitroadshadow4667 2 роки тому +5

    ah cause diazonium is a leaving group.

  • @Buckykatt
    @Buckykatt 2 роки тому +2

    some of the time i have no clue what you're talking about but i do enjoy your videos and i always learn something .

  • @aldenconsolver3428
    @aldenconsolver3428 2 роки тому +3

    submitting to your greater wisdom I would still say - if you are wondering if you need to use the eye rinse and/or the safety shower, USE IT. As soon as something hits eyes or bare skin the clock is ticking and the damage will worsen with almost a geometric gradient. Ie a delay of 1 second with do 1 unit of damage, but 2 seconds of exposure with do 4 units of damage. Once the skin fails then things get worse very very fast as the substance will be in the living reproducing part of the skin.

  • @Hoellenmann
    @Hoellenmann 2 роки тому +17

    I once did a HPTLC with Toluene/Acetone. Finished the documentation things. Then I walked over to the sink and threw the 3 or 4 ml of mobile phase in. As the Toluene smell hit me I thought, Oh no, what have I done. Then I proceeded to not telling my teacher and acting like nothing happened.

    • @milesmccollough5507
      @milesmccollough5507 2 роки тому +1

      LOLLL this one.

    • @JosephCoxH
      @JosephCoxH 2 роки тому +2

      My late father worked in a paint factory, so they used a LOT of toluene, huge barrels of the stuff, and they would sometimes catch people selling it out the back door to huffers who used it for the euphoric effects.

    • @YuPuWang
      @YuPuWang 2 роки тому +2

      As the toluene hits the residual water in the sink, the sudden spike of its vapor pressure due to azeotrope formation makes the smell even more conspicuous.

    • @Hoellenmann
      @Hoellenmann 2 роки тому +1

      @@JosephCoxH That sounds horrible, breathing toluene vapour 1m away from the source smells like you get cancer in about 3 seconds. That must be absolutely disgusting to breathe this through a soaked rag or something.

  • @EdwardTriesToScience
    @EdwardTriesToScience 2 роки тому +3

    Not the worse accident but certainly a surprising one, so I decided to make some manganese sulfate according to a home chem book, and it just said heat some manganese dioxide from a battery with sulfuric acid, so I did that and there was immediately bubbling and I thought "Huh thats odd" and then it hits me, the sharp stench of chlorine. Now it might be confusing why chlorine was being generated and it stumped me too, but thats when I realized theres ammonium chloride in the manganese as the electrolyte so there was HCl being made in situ, and it reacted with the MnO2 making chlorine :/ It also explained why when I added NaOH to a slurry of MnO2 it stunk of ammonia, the ammonium chloride ofc

  • @Alex-jj3pe
    @Alex-jj3pe 2 роки тому +7

    I work in a physics research lab where we use tritium gas on a regular basis. We were recently on the receiving end of a big fuckup where one of our contractors sent us a pressure vessel with glass capsules in it that was supposed to be filled with deuterium! Well turns out they filled the vessel through a line that was full of tritium and severely contaminated it without noticing. Luckily we opened it in a room with a tritium monitor which instantly went nuts upon opening. Everyone then sprinted out of the room with panicked looks and we spent like $100,000 on decontamination, bioassays for everyone, and replacing a bunch of equipment that couldn't be decontaminated. Luckily nobody ended up receiving a significant dose of radiation or breathed in a meaningful amount of tritium gas but holy shit what a disaster.

    • @zockertwins
      @zockertwins 2 роки тому +1

      Oh my god! Imagine if the tritium detector hadn't been there! Was the contractor held accountable at least?

    • @Alex-jj3pe
      @Alex-jj3pe 2 роки тому +1

      @@zockertwins yeah they reimbursed us for all the damages and now they have a totally separate fill station for tritium fills. Also our shipping/receiving department is checking all incoming vessels for radiological activity before passing them along. Still sucked having to spend 2 weeks scintillator swiping every surface and tool in the lab that could have been potentially exposed.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +1

      What the actual fuck is wrong with the supplier!!!!!!

    • @Alex-jj3pe
      @Alex-jj3pe 2 роки тому +2

      @@That_Chemist the guy who was doing the fills is apparently an old guy who's been working there forever and just doesn't give a fuck anymore(but he got fired obviously). And we can't switch to some other supplier because they're the only one that exists that makes all the different proprietary stuff we need.

    • @matthewhall5571
      @matthewhall5571 2 роки тому +1

      @@That_Chemist they must be affiliated with BlastaDeck

  • @chair547
    @chair547 2 роки тому +4

    Dumbest chemistry-related thing I've ever done with take a shot of white vinegar. It was food grade but still

  • @Dmayrion2
    @Dmayrion2 2 роки тому +2

    A grad student purchased 10 mCi of Cf-252 and put left it in a coworker's desk drawer without telling anyone and then left for another job. To show how serious this is, we now keep it (at 2 mCi) in a 55 gallon drum filled with neutron absorber off-site where no one is within 30 yards of it.

  • @mastershooter64
    @mastershooter64 2 роки тому +4

    "It is one of the funniest things ever to see a mother scrubbing dirt off her kid's face"
    -That Chemist 2022

  •  2 роки тому +6

    Both real life experiences (especially ones to learn from) and funny jokes are appreciated ❤️. Would love to see more of these every now and then, when there's enough material available

  • @californium-2526
    @californium-2526 2 роки тому +3

    My class' rookie mistake: Several months ago - November 2021, my class, and I, did a lead-based precipitation experiment. Why lead, and not silver? Because the chemistry book said so! Anyways, it's KI + Pb(NO3)2. I was meant to dissolve the KI, and I used a spatula which had a little bit of leftover PbI2. I was excited a bit too much, and spilled some of the solution onto my hand. The PbI2 had dissolved to form (PbI4)2-. I quickly wiped my hands off, and, after a minute or two, washed my hands. I don't think too much lead got transferred to my blood, but still. It's lead. I and my class just straight up obliterated safety. A few girls inhaled the glass vial.

  • @yeoldebaccyfarm3081
    @yeoldebaccyfarm3081 2 роки тому +3

    My favorite story to tell was when some walls and some of the roof was fluorecing for a few days after some glassware broke and splattered everywhere. Nothing dangerous involved. Most dangerous compound was propably NaOH

  • @tissuepaper9962
    @tissuepaper9962 2 роки тому +2

    Okay, protip. If you can't be fucked to find the correct gloves for working with cryogenics, *don't wear any!* A nitrile glove isn't going to do anything except trap the liquid. You're already eschewing safety by not using correct PPE, don't make the work even more dangerous by wearing the wrong PPE.

    • @firstmkb
      @firstmkb 2 роки тому

      I don’t have any cryogenics, but what kind of gloves should you have?

  • @thomas1055213
    @thomas1055213 2 роки тому +2

    I’m a mechanical and physics major, none of this made sense but I still laughed when prompted

  • @ashmarie5049
    @ashmarie5049 Рік тому +1

    Okay so I’m not a chemist and don’t work in a lab but I have 2 ppe stories to tell. Last year I got my funeral director apprentice license. During that course, one of the professors told us about a horrific story he had with formaldehyde. Firstly, if you don’t know, formaldehyde is the chemical used to preserve human/animal tissues for open casket funerals and scientific research- it works by denaturing the proteins in your cells and kills the microbes that cause decomposition. There’s also something called cavity embalming- this is where a long trocar needle is used to suction out fluid from the abdominal cavity and then another trocar needle attached to a tube that has a bottle of embalming fluid- basically a formaldehyde solution- at the top. He told us that he was a young embalmer at the time and thought he was pretty much invincible. So, he begins to use the formaldehyde trocar and the bottle isn’t screwed on correctly. The formaldehyde begins to run down his arm but he doesn’t realize it. Once he does, he stops what he’s doing and jumps into the safety shower but it was too late. Over the next week, large patches on his arm began to harden and then when new skin pushes through to the surface those hardened patches of skin fall off in chunks. Pretty gross and awful stuff- and that’s why you should always wear gowns with plastic underneath them if you’re working with formaldehyde.
    The next story is from when I was in my apprenticeship and if you get grossed out by poop I would stop reading. Now, in the funeral industry most places are still pretty old fashioned and this is true in the ppe sense- especially at this awful funeral home I was working for. Things like face masks, respirators, and face/eye shields aren’t always seen as a necessity but I promise you that if you’re working with bodily fluids THEY ARE NECESSARY. So, being the naive new apprentice I was, myself and another new apprentice were washing a body to be embalmed. You basically just used soap and a mid pressure hose to wash down a body from head to toe. This includes things like the nose, mouth, and anus. We get to this decedent’s anal cavity. They are purging. Purging is when body matter seeps from the body- mouth, ears, nose, anus, sometimes vaginal cavity. But they was direct from the hospital and so they were purging feces. This feces just kept coming and coming and coming. Myself and the other apprentice were not wearing face shields. We were using this hose to attempt to flush this decedent’s anal cavity so we could plug it using cotton. The other apprentice is taking her turn flushing while I hold the decedent on their side- this was a heavier person so it was easier for us to take turns. The other apprentice begins flushing and gets splashed in the face with fecal matter. Not a little bit. A lot a bit. It was horrific to witness, I can’t imagine how she felt. Our funeral home was strict about shower and eye wash use and so she had to go to the bathroom and clean her face off in the sink.
    I ended up leaving the funeral home and eventually the industry for things completely unrelated but in my house we still call it “ash’s swamps of dagobah”

  • @jovanj2717
    @jovanj2717 2 роки тому +3

    These horror stories in the lab make me grateful to be a music major and not a chemistry major. Y’all are so awesome, but a little insane😅

  • @jamesluck2969
    @jamesluck2969 Рік тому +1

    Not chem related 100% but I've never experienced a slash from and 100% known chemicals.
    Rather I use to work for a water treatment facility, this facility handles waste water from storm drains, sewers, and vac trucks.
    In this case the plant is able to treat commercial waste and civil waste.
    Welp we had a digester leaking "sludge" and I was told to go play the dutch boy and make a dike out of sandbags until a more permanent solution could be done.
    Well I lost grip on one and instantly got dosed head to toe in partially treated waste material.
    After a trip to the emergency shower, guided by others, since I has wearing safety glasses but those dont help with liquids, especially large waves of liquid. Then a quick scrub down with 35% hydrogen peroxide, since itll kill most everything. I was sent to the ER to then explain what the hell happened.
    Anyhow after quite a bit of medication, and a incident investigation plus safety debrief. I believe I'm fine, but we will see if I test positive in the coming years for hepatitis.

  • @justinbyers1725
    @justinbyers1725 2 роки тому +4

    Love your channel. Not a chemist in the professional realm but I do enjoy reading about it and seeing how it works. I was licensed herbicide applicator for 8 years so it was interesting seeing how herbicides affected plants thru chemistry

  • @SignalDitch
    @SignalDitch 2 роки тому +6

    After all the lecture, it's nice to see a video that's all reactions

  • @PowerCrafter123
    @PowerCrafter123 2 роки тому +2

    TC: "Today I'm reading your comments..."
    Me: *gets excited*
    TC: "...from last month."
    *sad me noises*

  • @prjndigo
    @prjndigo Рік тому +1

    The correct order of operations for proper safety shower use:
    1. Slowly scream FAAAAAAUUUUGHK as you head for the safety shower dropping your lab coat, gloves, apron etc on the way.
    2. Blow your shoes off at the safety shower.
    3. Enter safety shower
    4. Assess contamination and take rapid breaths
    5. Hold breath while the biohazard water gushes over you either clothed or unclothed (as per contamination assessment)
    6. Finish clearing situation.
    If you've never seen someone PUT THEMSELVES OUT in the safety shower you may not fully understand these instructions.
    These instructions also vary by activity but BY GOD keep it out of your shoes... if that means wearing disposal bags over your socks in krocks in the lab thats what you do.

  • @Radon-sp1po
    @Radon-sp1po 2 роки тому +2

    One time in 7th grade someone knocked over the alcohol lamp and set the entire top of the table on fire

  • @Feetkiller97
    @Feetkiller97 2 роки тому +10

    I have a radioactivity story from high school. We had a University visit our school for the final year students to basically muck around with radioactivity experiments for a day (like cloud chambers, measuring how air can absorb radiation, measuring half life etc.) And someone managed to secretly attach a radioactive source to some poor guys backpack. He walked all lunch through the school (the physics class had a lunch break in the middle) with a radioactive lead source on his pack. And then when he got back into class the teacher could not understand why the geiger counters would suddenly go completely crazy (when the guy walked past them ofcourse) all the time. It took a good hour till they found out. Needless to say the teacher was pissed off. We never found out who actually did it though.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +10

      Damn that is actually terrifying

    • @gamingmarcus
      @gamingmarcus 2 роки тому +2

      It's kind of sad. The fear of radioactivity has gone so far that my school needed a locked lead cabinet for a bit of Uranium glass, which is probably a lesser radiation source than bananas.

    • @Feetkiller97
      @Feetkiller97 2 роки тому +1

      @@gamingmarcus it seems here where I live it's somewhat more open. Chemicals and radioactive material was still in a locked cabinet but there wasn't like a super lead lined security or anything. We were free to work with Mercury and stuff like antimony (although I understand it hasn't got a whole lot to do with radioactivity. Although i have some radioactive minerals in my collection)

    • @user255
      @user255 2 роки тому

      @@gamingmarcus Uranium glass actually can be quite active. But not enough to be dangerous, unless you constantly carry it close to you.

  • @petersmythe6462
    @petersmythe6462 2 роки тому +2

    Lifetime dose of radiation isn't a good measurement.
    You can have a few Sv all at once, get sick, survive, and then get cancer later.
    Or you can have a dozen Sv spread out over decades and be fine, with minimally increased risk of cancer.
    And it definitely matters what that radiation is coming from. I.E. Whole body gamma vs something hiding in your bones.
    The dose response relation here is something very complex and not remotely linear.

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому +2

      It’s great for a thumbnail tho

  • @notamouse5630
    @notamouse5630 2 роки тому +3

    My grandpa knew a guy who went into a cyclotron while it was operating. Yes, the poor man was dead in a short enough time.

  • @seanrowshandel1680
    @seanrowshandel1680 9 місяців тому +1

    There were some southern Koreans in my school and I tapped on their hair. Now I'm old and I don't know what I'm supposed to be trying to do. Have you seen the film Being There?

  • @ConcretorumAzoth
    @ConcretorumAzoth 2 роки тому +3

    Me and my buddy snorted tiny amounts of copper oxide in chemistry class and got suspended

  • @HAL_9001
    @HAL_9001 2 роки тому +1

    @15:24 so if I die because I'm working with LiAlH4 and expected a carrot to save me, I should let you know. Got it.

  • @Pippin2luv
    @Pippin2luv Рік тому +1

    Right after the nitrogen in glove story I got a chocolate advertisement and the first thing I hear is the crinkling of unwrapping a chocolate. My immediate imagination was not pleasant

  • @wesleythomas7125
    @wesleythomas7125 Рік тому +1

    That guy who "found a pretty coin with a cool logo" is a Plainly Difficult video in an alternate timeline...

  • @alextopfer1068
    @alextopfer1068 2 роки тому +2

    Are you going to start soliciting brunette gamer girl bath water for experiments now?

  • @jonassieckmann2820
    @jonassieckmann2820 2 роки тому +2

    Once in a Lab a student tryed to make a borate proof Reaktion with Methanol on a tripod and the beaker with a bunch of Methanol stood directly near that. So he tryed to Light it on fire with a flint and Steel and the hole beaker burned too. So he grabbed it with his bare Hand and poored it down the drain, but the hole sink began to burn. Also he had some small burns on his hand.

  • @scottydawg1234567
    @scottydawg1234567 2 роки тому +1

    9:00 This of course isn't *my* story, but if you haven't before, I encourage you to look up Anatoli Bugorski. He had a particle accelerator beam pass right through his brain and lived, albeit with numerous side effects.

  • @THErcbomber
    @THErcbomber 2 роки тому +3

    I work at a cyclotron currently! We are apart of a hospital and do research grade things ( not normal PET diagnostic studies). Anyways we were making [F18]-FPEB. Now we use hot cells, with nitrogen lines, titan valves, and syringes to add our reagents. One of the steps involve heating the vessel at 150C while pressurized/ sealed for 20 min. I go to get a drink of water and came back to my personnel Geiger counter beeping when i enter the lab ( far away from the hood). I walk over and it begins beeping faster and i see the reaction had not sealed well. It was all the way to a T-valve and so i quickly opened some vents and raised the pressure to push the solution back. I need to handle the T-valve and get sprayed with a few mL of radiation. I had well over 100mCi over my chest, hair, beard.
    Had to shower like 5 times that day. After every shower a radiation safety officer (RSO) would scan to see the counts on me. Luckily they tested and i did not ingest and dangerous amount and I had my glasses on so none in my eyes. It was the worst incident our facility had in over a decade. Luckily no lasting damage and handled well. We have quick response and the RSOs take these situations very seriously (dangerous or not).
    For reference patients are typically injected with 5mCi of activity. We still make jokes about it and are dealing with lasting paperwork with overseers. So many check valves and pieces of equipment changed.

  • @defenestrated23
    @defenestrated23 2 роки тому +2

    I have a bunch of stories. Rookie mistakes? Pulling tight tubing off of a glass hose barb on an adapter. Glass snapped and cut my hand. Once used a non-vacuum-rated flask as a vac trap. Imploded once it hit 50 torr and made a huge bang, no damage.
    Not a mistake but definitely my most fun story. Was doing a scale up in the GMP kilo lab for a process where chromatography hadnt been optimized away yet. Which meant running a column with 200L each of DCM and heptane for 8H straight. We had pre-ordered hundreds of 2L erlenmeyer flasks, and proceeded to fill every available table and shelf in the lab with fractions. Despite running the walk-in hood fans at full blast and covering each fraction with foil, by the end of the day, it got pretty heady in there. My labmate and I were having a grand old time cracking jokes and giggling from all the fumes. Definitely made 8H of stooping under the column spout with flasks more tolerable.
    Superviser comes in the afternoon to check on us and immediately makes a face and exclaims "Wow! How can you put up with the smell!?" We had gone totally noseblind to it, a la frog slowly boiled in water.
    Also we had an earthquake in the lab once. I thought at first it was a high vac pump gone unbalanced and shaking my bench, until I looked up and saw all tubing in the lab swaying and every flask sloshing. That was actually terrifying but thankfully nothing fell over.
    Worst accident was in undergrad o-chem lab. The school just got a new fire detector system which was suuuper touchy. As in, bunsen burners in the hood set off several false alarms. We were evaporating diethyl ether from 50ml flasks (we didn't have many rotovaps, community college) on these ancient hotplates. There must have been a spark or something and the flask caught fire. The teacher (I'm guessing because he didn't want to deal with paperwork) decides the best way to deal with this was to pick it up with tongs and place it in the large stone lab sink. Also this apparently wasn't the first ether fire that day and wasn't the first time he'd done this maneuver. But this time, as he removed it from the hood, the fumes blasted a fire geyser out and lit his face on fire. So much for avoiding hassle.
    Not my lab, but in the material science lab next door, someone knocked over a compressed gas cylinder while changing them out. The tech didn't know they are supposed to either be chained and/or capped at all times. Well a full tank fell over, hit the valve on the edge of a counter, and suddenly had a 2000psi cold gas rocket on his hands. It punched through multiple concrete walls like it was a gingerbread house before thankfully embedding itself several feet deep in a dirt berm.

  • @TheHuntermj
    @TheHuntermj 2 роки тому +2

    I want to see the plume of smoke from burning Phosphorus illuminated by a UV lamp but I would definitely end up making a disaster zone!

  • @TheMrFrukt
    @TheMrFrukt 2 роки тому +4

    Reminds me of that time when I used buckthorn tea as a negolyte for a redox flow battery

  • @srs6128
    @srs6128 2 роки тому +1

    I am making a digital chemical lab! There are a few glitches, the atoms simply combine with each other for now

  • @MadChemistVEVO
    @MadChemistVEVO 2 роки тому +8

    A screw malfunction on a cabinet shelf led to one of those 1 l stained bottles of standardized permanganate solution, freshly made and ready to cure for a week, to be dropped 50 cm onto the hard floor. Man, I'm glad I was just a student and not the technician😂😂

  • @Aikano9
    @Aikano9 2 роки тому +3

    8:37 ooh free cancer coin

  • @jacobp.2024
    @jacobp.2024 2 роки тому +1

    If you're working with liquid nitrogen, no gloves are better than nitrile gloves.

  • @Petemate69
    @Petemate69 2 роки тому +2

    I've had a similar near miss with SoCl2 i distilled from quinoline. Changed the collected flask and distilled 10 degree os so above the BP thinking there shoudn't be much if any SoCl2 left. Moved the flask containing quinoline to a sink and i cautiously added one single drop of water which resulted in a violent release of HCl/SO2 which instinctly made me shit myself despite being prepared and drop the flask which smashed into the sink giving off even more gas as it reacted with residual water. Thankgod for PPE!

  • @mikko-pekkaleppanen3761
    @mikko-pekkaleppanen3761 2 роки тому +3

    Some mistakes were made when I was trying to nitrate phenanthroline. To those who do not know, phenanthroline doesn't get nitrated easily, and you need to have as concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids as possible and temperature at around 180 C. I dissolved the starting material in sulfuric acid, and was instructed to use an ice bath when adding more acid, and the to start increasing the temperature slowly. The result was that the mixture froze in the ice bath.
    I did the reaction in a three-necked flask and capped the extra necks with rubber septa. I did this because I have had issues with glass caps getting stuck in the necks. I have no idea why I thought the septa would survive these conditions. They didn't.
    This reaction produces a lot of nitrogen dioxide. I managed to breath in a nice amount when taking a TLC sample. If you have ever wondered how it feels to get a hot acidic gass in your lungs, I can tell that it hurts. A lot.

  • @JoshSweetvale
    @JoshSweetvale 2 роки тому +2

    9:50 The days you miss things are also usually the days you take shortcuts.
    When your mind is telling you not to bother with precaution X, don't listen.

  • @EmptyMTYT
    @EmptyMTYT 2 роки тому +2

    I'm not a chemist but I regularly give myself chemical burns bleaching my hair

  • @sealx2292
    @sealx2292 2 роки тому +2

    I still dont know what excatly happend but as an undergrade I had to synthezie Tetrakis(acetonitrile)copper(I) hexafluorophosphate in one of the lab courses. I got something on my jeans but I didnt notice it. There was no visible damage and I only noticed the next morning a 2 cm diameter circle on my leg that felt like a rotten tangerine. HPF6 should have damaged my jeans I guess so it had to be acetonitrile...? But I would be suprised if it can deal such a damage.

  • @uiucchemistry2664
    @uiucchemistry2664 2 роки тому +3

    These are some interesting and funny stories lol. I even get secondhand embarrassment just reading some of them but hopefully everyone remembers that chemistry must always be treated with respect and due diligence to take necessary safety precautions.

  • @philp3786
    @philp3786 2 роки тому +3

    A similar ether ignition happened in one of the undergraduate labs I was a TA for. Students did a short reaction in diethyl ether, then had to later recrystallize their product in an ethanol:water solution (I believe it was like 70:30).
    Student are hearing their solvent on a hot plate and out of nowhere the student at the fumehood next to the students I was assisting starts calling out “Fire!”. I looked over and saw the beaker full of orange flames, and actually paused for a second and asked “why isn’t the fire blue?”. Students were panicking but i just quickly suffocated the fire and took the beaker off the hot plate. Apparently the prepared bottle of ether was right next to the ethanol:water and the students didn’t check the label properly…

  • @NebulonRanger
    @NebulonRanger 2 роки тому +3

    This isn't even really a chem story, but it's related to a certain terrifying chemical so I'll tell it.
    Back in the early 2000s, my mum was working at a horse boarding facility with an ex-friend of hers. At one point, the ex-friend had been tasked to clean out the stalls and walking area inside the barn using the cleaning chemicals they had on hand--bleach and ammonia solution. You can probably already tell where this is going; the dumbass decided "hey, let's add this ammonia to the bleach, that'll add some cleaning power!" and filled the barn with chloramines and NCl3 lmao

    • @That_Chemist
      @That_Chemist  2 роки тому

      Oh no :(

    • @NebulonRanger
      @NebulonRanger 2 роки тому

      @@That_Chemist We always joke about there being no way people can be stupid enough to mix ammonia and concentrated bleach, but yes, people can absolutely be that stupid