Answer – I do.
Let me explain.
Long ago when the world was young, I attended a school for which science was, to be fair, not in the forefront of the curriculum, and the labs were rather like Snape’s Dungeon at Hogwarts. Most of the time we had to make (or repair) the glassware before we could even attempt an experiment.
The chemistry teacher, whose arms and hands were covered in burns, would hold up a fuming beaker and say things like “Oh dear – the textbook says I shouldn’t make this under any circumstances.”
The biology teacher would get an ancient, rusting tin of potassium cyanide from the back of some cupboard, dig out a heaped teaspoonful and say, with a mischievous glint, “I’ve got enough here to kill the whole school”.
One thing I remember from my school science labs, though, was the benches. Built to resist years of serious abuse from acids to explosions (I still remember the ether fire I set off, only by that time I was a teacher), these benches were huge slabs of hardwood — mahogany, perhaps, or teak — that must have been almost two inches thick.
These days, I guess, lab benches like this are routinely replaced with some high-density chipboard composite covered in a high-impact plastic. Apart from anything else, huge two-inch-thick planks of mahogany or teak are probably impossible to source these days.
So if you know of any, perhaps being thrown onto a skip outside your refurbished laboratory, do let me know. I’m going to do a DIY remodelling of the kitchen at the Maison Des Girrafes this summer, and I could really do with some decent worktops…
Sounds like my ‘A’ level Chem teacher. He let me use his potassium cyanide for a particularly recalcitrant reduction once.
plans blog post
Henry, I am rather fond of modern workbenches. I don’t know what they are made of, but they are amazingly resistant to everything. I am one of these people who has problems concentrating if my workspace is untidy – even a fingerprint on a computer screen drives me to distraction. So one of my beloved rituals is wiping down my bench with alcohol before and after an experiment, and making the grey surface gleam.
I am one of these people who has problems concentrating if my workspace is untidy – even a fingerprint on a computer screen drives me to distraction
Jenny, you’re making me feel terribly guilty. Although I keep my workspace at work fairly clean, my workspace at home is a pit.
It’s only a cupboard under the stairs, though, so being rather small it gets cluttered rather easily. Well, that’s my excuse. The desktop is only a piece of MDF supported on battens. For the kitchen worktops I want the real
dealhardwood. Preferably scrounged. So, do keep a lookout, folks.Henry – I’m a bit worried by the yellow and grey striped creatures to the left of your keyboard. Any Dr Who watcher will know that things like this will pupate overnight and turn into something monstrous and deadly.
We had a kitchen built a few years ago, from John Lewis (naturally). We had “lab bench” worktops put in, exactly as you describe – nice thick cherry wood, which is darkening nicely with the years. We do not have as many scratched graffiti and burn marks as on my old schools’ lab benches, but I expect we will get there eventually.
When the kitchen fitters had put the benchtops on, I got them to make some thin shelves with the offcuts, for the cookery books (for rest of family) and bottles of wine (for a.n. other family member).
So, try John Lewis? Even if not the whole deal, they may have some offcuts that they may allow you to have on their “never knowingly undersold” policy ;-)
PS I mean thin in the sense of narrow, not in the sense of the wood itself being thin.
Are modern day chemistry teachers different from those of the past? At my school the infamous Hank Tanner once set his trousers on fire. After dousing the flames he sent one boy off to his house to ask his wife for a spare pair and continued the lesson.
I’ll be keeping my eye on the EDP for news about mysterious thefts of lab benches from schools. As well as for reports on the bizarre monsters rampaging through the Norfolk countryside.
Are modern day chemistry teachers different from those of the past?
At my daughters’ school, which is a “science specialist school”, yes. They are allowed to do practically nothing in a practical sense, in science, and nor are the teachers. Same goes for the varous “DTs” as they are called — “food tech” (as they now call cooking) in particular.
There has been a conversation about this aspect of science education on N Network in the past couple of months, but I am afraid I cannot recall exactly where, so can’t provide a link.
At my school, " DT s" meant what it’s supposed to mean.
@Brian C: I’m a bit worried by the yellow and grey striped creatures to the left of your keyboard. Any Dr Who watcher will know that things like this will pupate overnight and turn into something monstrous and deadly.
LOL. These yellow-and-grey striped creatures are hosepipe couplings supposedly on their way to the garden shed – leftovers from last week’s enginineering project which involved a lot of pipework, water butts and recycling used bathwater onto the garden. That’s the problem with my office – it becomes a dumping ground for DIY and gardening bits and pieces, broken toys (for Dr Gee’s Toy Hosital), bits of musical equipment, aracana of an elecrical nature and unpaid bills. I really do have to sort it out. Mostly, when I do any actuial work, I take the laptop elsewhere e.g. to the sofa, the train, or (as now) outside on the patio.
@Maxine: John Lewis. I agree – absolutely the best quality. Our new sofa and chair came from John Lewis and they are the most comfortable items of seating we’ve ever had. The sofa is big enough to sleep on full-length, and is quite comfy for an overnight stay (apply Dr B. Zivkovic of North Carolina for testimonials).But lab-style slabs of cherry wood from JL? Phew. I’d have to save up for those.
@Brian D: Are modern day chemistry teachers different from those of the past? At my school the infamous Hank Tanner once set his trousers on fire. After dousing the flames he sent one boy off to his house to ask his wife for a spare pair and continued the lesson.
What a great tale. My chemistry teacher described above was a rotund, roseate lady with blonde curls who was about 4ft tall at her full height, and who, I’m sure, would have been burned as a witch in earlier years. The biology teacher mentioned above was a truly wonderful gent by the name of David Lanning. A teacher of the old school, he taught biology the old-fashioned way – we learned traditional botany and zoology, drew everything, and only heard about DNA at the last minute. David had been a submariner in the war, and told the most amazing ghost stories. Sometime in my student days I came back to school to work as his lab tech. But he died mid-term and I had to take over the 4-th form and A-level chemistry
for a few weeks. David taught me a remarkable mnemonic for the cranial nerves – an example that’s probably unique as it’s the only one I’ve heard that isn’t (too) obscene. It goes
which translates as
Believe it or not, this mnemonic has proved at least as valuable to me as a Nature editor as anything else in my science education.
@Bob: keep looking – and let me know, will you? :) Meantime I’ll place a wanted ad on my local branch of Freecycle – and visit one or two timber reclamation yards I know.
@Richard: I thought Delirium Tremens was Cranial Nerve XIII…
lab-style slabs of cherry wood from JL? Phew. I’d have to save up for those.
yes, we’ve been in this house for 15 years and have afforded one set of [aforementioned cherry wood] worktops in that time.
make that 17. (I remember the length of residence from my eldest daughter’s age, but missed a couple of years somewhere in there…)
Shamed by the sight of my own office (above) I went straightway from this blog and tidied it up, removing the yellow-and-grey
pupaehose couplings to the shed, where they belong. This appears to have been part of a chain-reaction – Mrs Gee got out the Bar Keepers’ Frienda cleaning product so powerful I swear it could, with a following wind, reverse entropy, and gave the kitchen and everything else she could get her hands on, and which couldn’t run away, a good scrub down.
Inspired by a kind of simultaneous, unknowing, blog karmic resonance, Malcolm cleaned out our oven this weekend — what a task. We daren’t use it now, it is far too posh inside.
Malcolm cleaned out our oven this weekend—what a task
Brave man. Our oven is a lost cause. I think I was too assiduous one day with the Mr Muscle and scrubbed so hard that I removed the lining from the base. No it’s an uncleanable hellhole.
Our chemistry teacher was of the old school too – exploits included: telling us how he blew up a toilet with a lump of sodium when he was at school, and then walking out of the room, leaving his own stock of sodium unguarded; setting fire to the ethanol-soaked string of a balloon full of hydrogen / oxygen mix (this was on the netball court, not the classroom); demonstrating the power of catalysts by blowing things up loudly enough to bring half the school’s staff running into the room (methane, pure oxygen and, erm, chromium, or something like that) etc etc.
Our own old-school labs almost got blown up by a student who accidentally set fire to his pencil sharpener (a magnesium alloy) then panicked and threw it into the sink. Which was above one of the gas pipes. The magnesium had almost completely burned through the sink when the aforementioned teacher hurdled a bench and threw himself at the gas shut-off button. Very dramatic apparently.
Cath, after all that, I’m amazed you’re still alive.
setting fire to the ethanol-soaked string of a balloon full of hydrogen / oxygen mix
That’s brilliant. I wish I’d thought of doing that.
The hydrogen ballon trick can be done quite nicely by igniting ether vapours that travel along the bench and set off the balloon.
I remember making homemade sparklers with glue, wooden splints and magnesium powder in high school chemistry – that was fun! Most likely why I’m a chemist now.
Re. benches – in a chemistry lab solid wood remains one of the most robust and resistant materials. Many modern alternatives can’t deal with conc. acids. MDF would probably dissolve in some of the solvents!
He also taught us the transition metals part of the curriculum three times because he kept forgetting he’d already done it. And we could always tell when he’d had a row with his wife because she’d match his bow ties to his shirts for him (he was colour blind – which might explain his difficulties with transition metals) and on bad days they’d clash horribly.
My school had some characters on its staff alright. You should have seen the religious studies teacher who had a first from Oxford but couldn’t control a class (we’d literally throw books around and take it in turns to jump out of the window), and also brought his goats in on a regular basis.
St Trinians – that was your school, wasn’t it?
Hardly – it was the local comprehensive. A crusty old professor at Manchester University read my application form during my interview and said “The Joseph Rowntree School – that sounds like the kind of school I should have heard of”. I was very tempted to reply with “only if you read the juvenile court reports in the Yorkshire Evening Press”.
Great teachers, otherwise terrible!
Great teachers, otherwise terrible!
I think great teachers make up for an awful lot.
Indeed, although you probably wouldn’t have convinced me of that at the time!
Y’know when i was a tech I had an MDF lab bench dropped on me… cut my bloody throat open and nearly broke my collar bone… they are…dense…as was the other tech “helping” me move the damned thing…
Ouch! MDF is very heavy… but that’s not to say it’s any good… I loathe the stuff. It’s OK to cut into rectilinear panels and drill holes in. But you try to do anything fancy-schmancy and it turns into weetabix – only toxic, because of the resins with which it’s stuck together. And it looks really boring unless painted or covered in a veneer or heavy-duty plastic for modern lab benches. Give me real timber every time.
Its probably no use to you at all – but Bath Reclamation have quite often got what appear to be 60s/70s school lab benches in amongst the 19th C fireplaces and broken stonework. They even have little sinks in them..
Oooh! Sneak in a take a photo, do!
Might take a little while – we don’t tend to go down there as a rule. Its the far end of town.
I might have to appoint you as my reclamation agent.