• Qkall@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Relative tale… And I let me preface this by saying… I know now how dangerous this was and how lucky I am. But this was chem 101 qkall… That dude was stupid.

    Anyway, we had this like 151 experiment project we had to finish by the end of the year. A lot of what is mentioned in the meme… Clear stuff mixing to more clear stuff. And we had to figure out what it was with a few simple experiments. Anyway, did I mention old, younger qkall was a bit of an idiot? Well that dumb ass forgot and had to do something like 70 experiments in one evening. To date myself a bit, this was before they really gave a shit who was in the building doing what. They just trusted you… So it’s me at like 8pm solo in the lab. I’m starting to clean up and… and yes… I know dumb… I put all the spare reagents in one big beaker and clean up my lab space. I turn around to dump my waste… And what I see was beautiful and terrifying… The liquid was purple. The gas was green and purple … And there were adorable green fireballs coming out of the beaker. Again very dumb… I close the hood and nope the fuck out… Fast forward to a much smarter and educated qkall. We’re last year seniors discussing our battle wounds and a peer is like ‘guys one time I went into the intro chem lab and the one hood was covered in purple stuff and there was broken glass everywhere.’ I let them finish their story telling how arduous the process was… Then sheepishly spoke up 'uh, so one I’m sorry but let me tell you what happened ’

    • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      In my second year of chemistry at uni we suddenly had to fill in health and safety paperwork before every lab - they explained that during the finals at the end of the previous year an older student had absent mindedly dropped a lump of sodium in the aqueous waste container, which exploded, causing all the different waste containers to break open and start mixing. Thankfully it only destroyed the fume hood, the immediately surrounding benches, and a few thousand pounds worth of glassware, and didn’t get as far as the really expensive equipment.

  • vampire@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Yeah, mostly true, but sometimes in the pursuit of new colorless liquids they accidentally invent interdimensional travel

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Organic chemists just draw shapes and letters. I could do that when I was five. Nobody gave me a PhD for making a hexagon with the right number of sides.

  • BreadOven@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    More like white powders and clear liquids to make a new white powder. But some reactions do have cool colours.