CONTEST #2
Submitted by Curtis on Sun, 02/25/2007 - 5:31pm.
General Discussion
This is the discussion forum for Contest #2. What is the best laboratory disaster?
Post a comment describing the best laboratory disaster that you have seen. Please, only describe disasters where no one was seriously injured.
The winner will be determined based on your comments, so tell us which story you think should win.
Stinky
Submitted by Veena on Wed, 02/28/2007 - 7:30pm.
A rotation student who shall remain anonymous spilled concentrated Beta-Mercaptoethanol into the keyboard of her laptop computer. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of smelling this substance, it has been described as a stinky gym sock soaked in rotten eggs that someone farted on.
The computer and the general vicinity smelled incredibly foul for the whole day, earning the student the nickname "Stinky."
Lab fire
I'll get things started with the description of a small lab fire. A post-doc, who will remain anonymous, was boiling protein samples in a metal dish of water over a Bunsen burner. Well, the water dried up and the nasty residue in the metal dish caught fire and caught the tubes on fire. Lots of black smoke from the burning plastic spread quickly. The best part of the story is that it wasn't in our lab. The samples caught fire in the lab next door. They were quite confused about where the fire came from. Eventually the firemen came to our lab looking for the person who started the fire and the responsible person was identified. Needless to say this person is still embarrassed every time we bring it up.