…half your clothes have bleach stains on them, or were a free gift with purchase from Fisher Scientific/VWR.
My ex-favorite pair of cords, now psychedelically splattered with bleach.
I cannot tell you how many pairs of pants and shirts have been sacrificed in the course of my research career. How many jeans, corduroys, and khakis bit it during my intensive (and apparently spastic) efforts to clean up after myself. Let’s not forget the iodine/Wescodyne stains (which thankfully come out after a couple of washes), the permanent Coomassie splatters and bromophenol blue loading buffer kisses. If I wore the same outfit to lab everyday (eww) it would, in very short term, come to look like a Jackson Pollack… though I don’t think it would cost nearly as much.
Those bleach spots are now sort of a badge for me. They identify me as a lab worker. Much like the pipette that still sits on my desk, I am holding on to my bleach-splattered pants. They keep me grounded. And frumpy.
Oh, I need new clothes. Lots of them.
One of my professor’s in college (this was Organic Chemistry) always wore the same thing every day…white button-down shirt, khaki pants, brown shoes. He must have had three or four pairs of the same pants and shirts. They were always clean and look well maintained. This style would certainly mean that trying to find an entire outfit without lab “residue” would be much easier. Something to think about when you go shopping.
Did the socks come free with a Star Trek video?
(sorry ;)
Craig – This explains why so many people in labs have the same Fisher Sci T-shirt :) Wearing the identical outfit every day speaks of compulsion more than anything else. Bleach spots, like scars, add character!
Mike – Dude! Don’t knock the socks. I love those socks. What’s wrong with the socks? I love Star Trek, incidentally. Let’s not make a thing of it, ok?
Hee hee hee! (Rings doorbell and runs away giggling).
Star Trek I can give or take, as long as I get to take Uhura. Uhubba hubba.
I
fondlyremember destroying a sweatshirt in a first year chemistry practical class that involved glacial acetic acid. However, my chemistry teacher at high school, the irrepressible Hank Tanner, did set his trousers on fire during a class demonstration. Chemistry was always more fun than Physics…As I reported here in July, my work colleagues got rather confused when I told them I was heading to a science blogging conference:-
Yesterday, I was asked “are you into Star Trek?”. After I replied with “yes”, this was greeted with a couple of sniggers. I’m not exactly “a Trekky” by any sense of the imagination.
2 + 2 = 10
McDawg then gets hit with “so you’re off to a Star Trek Convention…”
Aye right.
“OK then, Google science blogging 2008” said McDawg.
—
Anna (and others), I think you’ll enjoy
Da Shatner Funk
Ahhh, the humble computer editing suite. The least appreciate member of any symphony orchestra.
Cool as funk, Graham! The “has been” record is a post-modern classic.
Dash – I tried to do some clever embedded video here as well – didn’t work the first time, and the 2nd one I put up disappeared. Maybe I’ll try again:
!!
Graham – No shame in loving Star Trek. None. Not here, anyway. Maybe in the scary outside world… but who wants to go there anyway.
Brian – That must have been some serious acetic acid! Undiluted, I presume? I have never spilled the straight stuff on myself. I can’t even imagine the stench. I was good at making things explode during organic chemistry lab. Usually allowed me to go home early! On occasion, physics lab was almost as fun as chem lab though – especially on the day we made ice cream with liquid nitrogen. I have no idea what that was supposed to teach me (other than that LN is cold and evaporates), but I was for it.
Sorry Mike – I took the first video you posted down. It messed with the formatting of the page. It’s best if you don’t futz with the format that YouTube gives you. That works well on NN.
In my high school chemistry class it was a mark of honour to have the most burn holes (chemical and heat-induced) and different coloured stains on your lab coat as possible.
The most damage I ever did to clothes was with conc HCl that I dropped due to dodgy nerve connections in my left arm following surgery when I was 7. (Sometimes I just briefly lose my grasp in that hand – I have learned not to hold anything important for too long, although now I come to think about it, it hasn’t happened in a few years. It got me out of playing the viola though, which I hated). Luckily the acid avoided my jeans and I peeled off and threw my lab coat and sweater across the lab in one fluid movement. When we were allowed back in the room, shivering in my t-shirt, I found more holes than fabric remaining. I was unscathed but there is still a weird marking on the floor of one of the Surgery Department labs at Newcastle University.
haha, I destroyed my lovely Cambridge blue shirt with dropping NaOH (at least I think it) on it. Didn’t really notice at the time but later, after washing the holes were numerous….
I guess it all would never happen if the lab coat was worn every minute every day. Now that’s a joke ;)
In the good old days chemistry sets at home were more
dangerousfun. I destroyed (or at least so badly stained that my mother withdrew them from service) a whole drying rack of shirts following some dubious experiment involving lots of potassium permanganate. You used to be able to buy all the ingredients for gunpowder from pharmacists in the UK, sigh, those were the days my friend….NaOH is nasty in that you don’t realise it’s on you until you pull your stuff out of the washing machine with holes in it!
Cath – you left your mark on the University! That’s pretty cool. Cooler still that you were actually wearing a lab coat. Somehow, I never got into the habit. I suppose in bio lab it’s not that much of a risk – other than bleach spots.
I did spill dilute NaOH all over myself once (it was only 0.4N). It felt really soapy and weird and I freaked out. Did I start wearing a lab coat from then on? Nope.
I did get 32P on my favorite shoes once. That was not a good day. I was absolutely determined to clean them to the point of not having to hand them over to the safety dept at the University. I poured so much radioactivity remover on them that I drowned all the nastiness. The counts went down. I was not about to give those shoes up for 6 months.
Brian – This is what I don’t get – were kids somehow more tame back then or just not aware of the explosive power of the chemicals in their hands? Did bad things happen which led to the removal of these compounds from chemistry kits, or were they taken out as a precautionary measure? Are kids today so much more malicious then those of generations past?
Brian> potassium permanganate
I read pomegrante and started thinking about chemistry experiments with small reddish seeds in them ;)
That must have been some serious acetic acid!
Hence the qualifying discriptor “glacial” (no water)
did spill dilute NaOH all over myself once (it was only 0.4N). It felt really soapy and weird
note the alkalinity of common soap and the rise of “pH neutral” face scrubs etc.
Are kids today so much more malicious then those of generations past?
No, but we live in a much more regulated and nannified society where the slow erosion of individual freedoms has lead to the loss of not only essential civil liberties, but created a society where we expect to have our freedoms removed, limited or delimited by a governmental higher power so that we can’t be allowed to take responsibility for own actions because it’s always someone else’s fault
>:(
Sorry, not picking on you by the way Anna, just happened to notice
Bad day, Ian? ;)
Didn’t know glacial meant undiluted. Note to self : hate chemistry even more. Was aware of the soap/base connection, though hate to think that soaps contain straight up NaOH.
I have to agree with you on the loss of individual freedoms part. There are more and more rules, it seems. There is legislation being considered in a Boston suburb currently – to ban the sale of eggs (normal, wholesome chicken eggs) in this suburb until after Halloween to cut down on kids egging homes and cars. Seriously. They want to stop selling EGGS so that pranksters don’t throw them. I hate to think what’s next.
Ban chickens within Boston city limits?
seriously, if you can’t laugh…
Personally I do my best to attend town hall meetings, write to my congressmen etc.. It’s potentialy not much, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna just sit around and let some jobsworth, gormless, dogooder
fuck around withmess about with needless legislation to justify their tiny, pointless, empty little lives with.Anna> There is legislation being considered in a Boston suburb currently – to ban the sale of eggs (normal, wholesome chicken eggs) in this suburb until after Halloween to cut down on kids egging homes and cars
I guess we are closer to “nope, you have exceeded you fat qouta of the week” time. Or rather “No Maam, there are so many kids toilet paper wrapping cars nowadays so we have banned the sales of TP”. wonder if that would make them see the way of their thoughts?
Regarding the chemistry: I guess it got noticed from the parents of the kids that they actually could get hurt (very small risk but still…) if the teachers actually did experiments in front of them. My mother, a chem/math teacher for grades 7-9, showed experiments from her desk to everyone’s happyness. Even black powder ;) And the kids* didn’t burn the school down, even if it was in a “less good” part of town. it is soooo much easier to make chemistry interesting with a bit of experimenting. The “danger factor” helps too…
*I however was enthusiastic with my chemistry box… :)