What stupid shit have you seen or heard in your classes or labs?
>making ethers
>using high molar sulphuric acid
>the weird kid spills some on his hand (don't know if on purpose or not)
>goes back to his chair and just stares at it
>taken to the hospital for chemical burns
>using ethanol
>some guy bets another to take a shot
>instavomit
>so many girls getting hair caught on fire
>>7904926
What community college are you attending?
>>7904949
that was in high school, don't really have many stories from studying math
>>7904986
you had access to high molarity sulfuric acid in highschool? fuark.
>Be at state university, taking gen chem I
>Russian lab instructor says "this reaction Ok for doing outside hood, but do not put face in it, because it evolves nitric acid gas"
>40 minutes later my lab partner and I get to that part of the experiment
>He sits down right in front of the reaction beaker and pulls out a snickers bar
>None of the Russian TAs give a shit
>I ask him what he's doing
>He says "snickers really satisfies"
>[math]\frac{\Delta x}{\Delta y}[/math]
>cancels the [math]\Delta[/math]'s
>>7905070
Ingenious. This is the Holy Grail the mathematicians have been looking for. This will solve everything.
>PhD supervisor: "Extend your results to a more general setting"
>One month of toil
>"These results are too complicated for people to understand."
>"Sometimes, learning is its own reward"
mfw
>>7905098
>"Sometimes, learning is its own reward"
He's right though.
>>7905098
>>"These results are too complicated for people to understand."
That's how you know it's publication time breh
You can always do it salami style if that makes it simpler and squeeze out four publications for the price of one
>>7905098
I burst in laughter hahaha poor you anon
>>7905067
I don't get it.
>>7905221
Don't try to understand ruskies
Anything not putin is funny to them
>>7905221
Not supposed to eat in the lab!!!!!
>Hypersonic lab
>Preparing lab test
>Setup for schileren photo
>Prime main tank
>Nigga decides to open door and adjust model
I like my eardrums senpai
>>7904926
>Final year in college (Not university)
>Ask a mate to pass you some chloroform in beaker and make a joking impression that you're gonna catch it if he throws it.
>He actually throws it.
>The chloroform is spelt all over the desk.
>People working at the same table get away from it as fast as they can.
>Feel like shit for the rest of the day.
>Not because of the retard-mate but because chloroform literally makes you feel tired.
>Mate didn't make it to first-year of chemistry course.
>Mfw
>>7904926
My team and I were doing titration, so we set up 4 beakers and for the last one for some reason it was changing color, so we kept adding NaOH until all was left. Then we realized we hadnt added the indicator.
>our face when
>>7905246
Wait, did he die?
>>7905296
Nah, just didn't have enough money to pay the tuition. To be fair, if you are dumb enough to throw anything in a lab, maybe you are simply not meant to be there.
>tfw you were the one who did and said stupid shit
>>7904998
Yeah. Not that guy but in my school in ireland you can get pretty strong solution
>>7905304
Everyone probably thought you were a nuisance
>>7905321
I know.
>be me be 16
>be in honors chemistry
>doin lab titrating sulfuric acid
>be shaky because crush told me to fek off
>be sad
>see crush
>walk up to crush
>hey anon
>hey bitch
>crush is mad
>crush has beaker of sulfuric acid in hand
>crush pours acid on my pants
>rip pants
>rip cock
Kek
>>7904926
A nearby school had big problems with solvents abuse using solvents taken from workshops. 5 liter cans disappeared routinely. So the teachers just ... bought some more!
Another classic is people getting drunk of iso propanol alcohol. That is generally considered a not too good idea even though it sure lasts a long time.
Oh, anotehr one from student days: metallurgy students found Winchester bottles of ethanol > 96 percent. Did not wonder how that was possible. Had a great party. The lot was poisoned with the benzene used to stabilize it. No longer possible for metallurgists to get large bottles of ethanol anymore.
>>7905389
>getting drunk of iso propanol alcohol.
keks
>The lot was poisoned with the benzene used to stabilize it
holy keks
>>7905242
>schlieren photo
that's really neat especially the colour ones
>>7905389
>drunk of iso propanol alcohol
Holy flying fuck I've done that once and it was easily the worst drug experience of my entire life. So much for acetone being kinder than acetaldehyde baka
>>7904926
How short was the school bus?
>>7905067
we used 12M in Highschool in Australia, had to dilute it when learning about dilution VC=VC blah blah blah. Kids forget it heats up when adding water, burns his hand on the outside of the conical flask
>>7904986
You had access to high molarity sulphuric acid in school, and you made ethers? What third world school did you go to where the health and safety regulations are so fucking lacks.
A dude in my introductory chemistry lab a few years ago said he wanted to be like Heisenberg (Breaking Bad) but he couldn't even do basic density calculations
He's probably a lot like Heisenberg in that he works at Los Pollos Hermanos, though.
>>7904926
>doing borohydride reduction
>reaction step
>reflux condenser setup
>go to the back of the lab for a pipet and bulb
>some kid has his aspirator set up to his condenser instead of water input
>pretend not to have looked
>>7906899
Spain. We also had some other chemicals that apparently were against some regulations to have, like large amounts of pure metallic sodium and potassium (and we did put them in water with some cool teacher).
>>7904926
Bastard dropped a box of liquid bromide and the whole school evacuates
The spill is really fucking huge,its like one and a half meter across by 4 second
>>7907092
we tried diluting it but it clearly fails because everyone was having lung irritations after about 5 minutes.
>>7904926
but wait there's more!
I remember someone making the case for alien humanoids on mars
We were in circuits class and one guy grabbed a circuit cable and stuck it in the power outlet, causing all the school power to shut down.
I'm surprised he didnt die there.
>>7907080
daamn,your balls are broken
>>7905070
I guess you can say..He doesn't like change! :^)
>>7907080
This more hilarious than stupid desu.
>>7907103
>in physics
>lights & sockets all go out
>look around
>one kid on the floor
>he was swinging on his stool while sticking a key in a power socket
In class we were talkin about the hole in the ozone layer. Some stacey blurts out "Oh! That is the hole that the space shuttle flies through, right?"
>>7904926
Take intro to chem in college, get stuck with a TA for nearly the whole class.
Day one we have general lab safety and stuff, I get copies of everything and read the heck out of them.
Later we start doing our labs. TA complains I take too long as I often stay late. We argue a lot. TA finds out I have been re-calibrating the equipment, which is way it takes me so long, and fuss at me. Then "helps" to fix what I "broke". I continue to do it but change the settings back so the TA doesn't know.
End of semester long lab TA announces that their results were x.x with error of +-20% from theoretical so final grading will be tiered based on those results. Raise my hand and ask what our grade would be if we got x.xxx with error of +-0.002% from theoretical. TA says that is more then good enough to get 100%, but that accuracy is what national labs and research university do and we could never get that as freshman. Smile knowing I just did, after all this is a research university so I got access to the right tools and tech.
Later have to defend my data as they TA suspected me of cheating, thankfully I has very good documentation with time-stamps. TA admits I just got lucky and passes me with full credit. It not luck it is called "READING THE F**KING MANUAL", stupid TA not knowing how to fully use the equipment.
>>7904998
My high school was paranoid. We had safety google and everything for mixing salt water. Was so tempted to drink all of it just to mess with the teachers.
>>7907130
you sound really cool anon
>>7907130
hmm. strongest stuff we used in highschool was pretty dilute HCl. Some lads and I stole about 500g of solid sodium, had some fun blowing up snowmen.
First time I really encountered something truly nasty was Gen Chem II, when we did the traditional copper oxide transformation. We used conc. nitric acid to dissolve the copper wiring. Only the TA was allowed to actually dissolve the copper. I was allowed to do my group's because i had favoritism, I eventually TA'd the course myself.
Another nasty bit was in Orgo I when we did a bromination of an aromatic compound. I was pretty high before the lab, and once I got a good whiff of the bromine I thought I was gonna die and got mad paranoid.
never went to orgo high again.
>>7907145
People tell me that all the time, but in reality I am 310.2611 °K (or 558.47 °R) which is warmer than normal.
>in school with mates
>a brand new bottle of Buttersäure
>supposed to just use a little bit for a reaction
>spill the whole bottle
>lab smells like shit
>still have to sit in the room with the worst smell you can imagine
>christmas holidays
>we're back in the lab
>still smells
>>7907130
Just wait until you get into industry: I have heard people seriously talking about "research" when what they actually meant was "let's read the manual". I still wonder if they got a "research" grant for that.
Also, why do all the hard work for a PhD when you instead can, well, read a couple of manuals? One such company let all in my division with a PhD go since we apparently were too expensive and cheap code monkeys were all they needed. Right.
>>7905413
Sounds like you might be able to even hear the colours in this case.
>>7906899
>lacks
Lax, anon
>>7907365
Still waiting.
I got an engineering minor with business management major, because that is the skill set I found every company seemed to lack and I turned out to be really good at it. Enough engineering to know what the heck is going on and enough business to know how to keep things on time and on budget.
Turned out the industry trend (material engineering) is to higher over qualified engineers to run lots of simple tests. Then they get promoted after many years or having a breakthrough idea to lead engineer which often actually requires some real PhD level knowledge. Then if they do really well they get promoted to business manager to manager the engineering department.
My training track short circuited this making me dramatically over or under qualified for every position I applied for. Thought it was a good idea at the time, now I don't know. Well as time passed I just took a job, jumped to a few slightly better jobs and now am slowly going insane making $40,000 a year and still living with my parents (cost of living in my area is one of the highest in the world).
I swear the next person who tells me I am too smart for where I am in life and I need to go work at NASA, just drop every thing and start a company, run for president, or ... I want to smack so hard.
Life is never simple, but at least I am simply alive. :)
>>7907722
What skill set is appreciated or get you promoted or does the job are all 3 very different things.
I did some quality assurance on the side but applied scientific methodology and rigor acquired from y time as a PhD student and later a researcher. You could say it was taking a sledge hammer to peanuts.I was thereby able to find far more deviations from the set norms than any of my colleagues not trained in research. However this success was not quite appreciated, you could say.
As for your background it sounds a bit like Industrial Economics from NTNU which in that place leads to eruptive career progressions and salary to go. In the UK and in Germany quite different backgrounds lead to career progressions.
>>7907278
>>a brand new bottle of Buttersäure
>>supposed to just use a little bit for a reaction
>>spill the whole bottle
>>lab smells like shit
If your poo in the loo smells like this you'd better seek medical attention. This smell is more like puke which, you know, tends to burst forth from the front, not the behind.
(captcha was a collection of ... wait for it ... flowers!)
>>7904926
>removing protection googles near a He laser.
>going close to a DC motor coupler wearing a loose jumper with fasteners for the hoodie ( I don't know what they are called, lol)
>touching metal chips right after they fall off from the lathe.
>>7907790
what's wrong with quads?
>In Asian Philosophy class
>Taking it because I'm a gook and Asian history classes aren't offered
>On ancient China
>Professor talking about Konzi
>Kid raises hand
>Asks if we're talking about the time of the shoguns and bushido
>>7907130
>Stories that never happened.
>>7905229
You've just offended my sense of humour, twat.
>>7907887
Well, Putin offended my sense of democracy, cunt
Your sentence doesn't really make sense desu btw, back to establish rusky
>>7907822
>Asks if we're talking about the time of the shoguns and bushido
See, I'm a white American an even I know that's hilariously wrong.
>>7907160
>°K
>>7907897
The only reason that I know that this is incorrect is because of Rurouni Kenshin and Gintama, coupled with the fact that China and Japan are distinct places.
>>7907856
I don't tell those, my life is far more interesting than most of the stuff you will find in fiction. This is why I have a small group nagging me to write a memoir.
>>7907752
All 3 have very different skill sets. Many of which are not things you can just learn from a book, yet people treat it like a linear path of progression. many will say one is harder then the others, but having done a bit of each I can say they all are hard in their own way.
Yep, I used scientific methodology and math to find and fix business problems others could barely understand. Remembered one manager was blown away by a moderately complex Excel graph that quickly summarized pages of numbers they had to scan though everyday, saved them a lot of time and effort. But interestingly it worked both ways. Whichever student engineering team I was on came in first, not because we had the best engineers as some teams were good other not so much. What made us have such an advantage was because I used basic business planning to eliminate redundant work and optimize how we did things.
My second major was Economices, so I get some of this. Same things are common in all significant career progressions and even in things like city development. But the problem here is starting that chain of events. Our social and monetary systems greatly reward a small number of jobs, which honestly a large minority could do with some training. This leads to everyone running towards them and a few years later we have a huge supply and pay and status drop sharply as demand is roughly constant. From my limited knowledge Germany has more rules and restrictions minimizing these boom and bust cycles as schools or unions may artificially limit things. We like the results but the moment you start talking about limiting the number of students in a field people see it as limiting their right to pursue the job they want. At which point it is a insult to the American Dream of getting whatever job you want.
>>7907119
Was he suicidal or just retarded?
>>7907113
You motherfucker.
>>7905070
He'd fucking love integrals.
If he could grasp enough of the maths to get to them in the first place.
>>7905101
Not if you're a real scientist. You aren't doing your job if you are just figuring things out, you have to figure out things that other people are interested in and communicate them clearly.
>>7909259
I did that and I know proper ways to get current through my body and survive
>be CS TA
>something babby's first linear algebra
>someone complains that they just want to make games
>wtf do I need matrices for??
>>7905389
This kind of shit is why everclear should be available everywhere with no tax.
People destroy themselves trying to find cheaper intoxicants when clean alcohol costs almost nothing to produce.
>>7904926
haven't wittnessed it myself, but my supervisor told me this story about his supervisor.
>he was a "laid off" type of guy in the lab
>meaning he wasn't too strict about controls, lab journals, security...
>not every flasks and bottles were labled
>clear liquids in a bottle were surely water, golden liquids were surely LB media (groth medium for bacteria)
>one day he was doing an experiment with a bunsen burner on and some paper nearby caught fire.
>He grabbed a bottle with a clear liquid, which surely has to be water, to take out the fire
>it was fucking ethanol
>huge flames
>what does the dude do?
>he just goes home
>that's right. He just went home without calling anyone or anything. He just thought to himself "Whelp. Time to call it a day"
>my supervisor came to the lab the next morning to bench with burn marks, some molten down pipettes and a horrible smell
>>7905070
>be innalab in chem1a
>professor trying to convince us to take his o-chem course next semester
>brings up an erlenmeyer of diethyl ether
>pouring it on his hand and huffing it in front of the class while he talks for 10 minutes about how great o-chem is,
>entire front row is buzzed and woozy
most bro-tier professor i've ever had
>>7904926
why do you think STEM is thing? we are the gatekeepers of civilization.
can you imagine one of these morons trying to build a car or a house. everyone would die. we do it so they don't hurt themselves, and our challenge is to make things so foolproof that none of these mooks kills his family with it.
>>7909930
>we are the gatekeepers of civilization
was that supposed to sound that cringey or was that an accident
>someone stupid
>give him a pressure air cleaner
>he nearly popped my right eardrum
>>7909934
>was that supposed to sound that cringey
i'm a little high and thought it sounded good.
>>7907125
Nice
>>7907365
>Sounds like you might be able to even hear the colours in this case.
How do you figure?
>>7909867
>sinx/n=six=6
:^)
>>7907722
>:)
You don't seem all that smart.
>>7907897
And I know your opinions are wrong, privileged shitlord.
>doing undergraduate research
>sophomore who is likable but a classclown is brought on by the professor
>a week into him starting im refluxing a solution containing about 100 mL of azido-propanol (an organic azide) to purify it
>this is done behind a reinforced fume hood for obvious reasons
>while im cleaning glassware I hear the beeping of the fume hood paneling being moved
>turn around and see the new guy turning off the water, opening the vacuum, and taking my flask off the condenser
>he swirls it around and asks what would happen if he were to put it in the sonicator which had both the sonication and heating element on at the time
>Im basically in full panic mode because he didnt know what he was doing and loudly tell him to put the flask down before he does something irredeemably stupid
>professor hears us and rushes over and sees him holding the flask
I had never seen ANYONE so furious in my entire life. The guy was kicked out of research and banned from ever entering a lab on campus so he ended up having to switch majors.
>>7910356
slight typo, the solution was about 100 mL and contained azido-propanol. a bit of editing gone wrong.
>>7909956
+1 for honesty
>>7909863
That reminds me of yet another story from my student days (say, how did I even survive??)
Student lab time, objective is temperature calibration. Measures freezing point and boiling point of water. Clever clogs realises he needs a THIRD data point, decides on alcohol. Hard to freeze, so what to do? Boil it of course!
So he fills a hefty beaker with alcohol, places it above a bunsen burner (I am serious here) and lights it up. So it dutifully boil. And promptly catches fire. Spectacular flames follow, this is after all boiling.
Sudent panics. His lab partner is (barely) more quick thinking and realises he has to smother the flames with textiles. Uses his jacket. Which is made of synthetics. Which catches fire. At this stage the lab looks like someone is simulating WWIII. History is getting rather fuzzy at this point but it is possible some actually thinking grad student wheeled in a 200 litres LN2 cryostat and cools everything and everyone down.
Within days all labs are provided with proper fire blankets.
>>7910485
Who doesn't know that alcohol is flammable?
>>7907080
well at least he's still drawing SOME kind of coolant through...
Wtf
>>7904926
>doing a dissection on a shark for some bio lab
>over hear someone daring someone to eat a piece of the shark
>think no one can be that stupid
>these things have been sitting in formaldehyde for months
>we're in university no one can really be this stupid it's like begging for cancer
>flip around
>guy cuts off a piece of the shark with a scalpel and starts eating it
>just watch in horror
>swallows
>three seconds later he pukes everywhere
>doesn't show up again for lab
>later hear that he was banned from all bio labs
>>7907777
>>touching metal chips right after they fall off from the lathe.
Lmao pussy I do this all the time they're barely even hot
>>7909867
>females
>smart enough for math
pick one
>undergrad research lab
>use ethyl methyanesulfonate as a point mutagen for a genetic screen
>only allowed ~20 mL in the entire building at a time, the stuff is crazy effective and incredibly volatile
>dumbass other undergrad girl takes it out, opens it out of the fume hood and begins pipetting on to an open plate, again outside of the fume hood.
>had to evacuate the building
There's a decent chance just being in the building that day increased our likelihood of cancer significantly, ems is like 10^-3 mutation rate
Another
>neuroscience lab
>final lab is 3 week prep/brain surgery/analysis on a live rat
>this guy claims he's gonna be a doctor and is super Gung ho about the whole process, including the fact that the rats are killed a week after the lab
>we do general anesthesia to keep the rats under during the procedure, but as anyone with experience in bio/Chem knows, the dose is the poison
>instead of routinely checking the rats signals during the procedure, this guy decides it would be easier to inject enough anesthetic to keep a dog under for a few hours
>the rat probably dies within a matter of minutes and he pretended like he had nothing to do with it
Honestly his group and the ta deserve some of the blame, they were supposed to double check before allowing us to inject anything
>>7904926
Ecology
>Transfer in the class a week late
>Only empty seat is with two black chicks
>Group of 3 rather than 4, I think I know why the other ditched
>Their physics class overlaps with Ecology so they rush headlong to finish early at the cost of everything else
>If it comes to dirt they avoid it
>"Oh hell naw, I just got my nails did, etc"
Art History
>Professor is chill, doesn't require any work from us
>Way to pass the class is to show up, take extremely light notes, and be awake
>Only thing up on the board are pictures of art
>People would always legit fuck off and take a pic of the board every slide change
>All the pics were already in the $40 book
>Bitch they failed
Sociology
>Variant designed for majors with the inclusion of academic discourse as a main feature
>Professor spends an entire class period explaining the rules and procedures for the online discussions
>Basically every claim needs to be backed back a citation, no ad hom, no hug boxing
>No matter how hard he tries to explain every week it's nothing but everyone doing the reverse
>Worse offenses are hug boxing and the most cringe worthy shit from fedora edge lords that sound like they're from either /sci/ or /pol/
>Happen upon cringe 3.0
>Refer to him as a "Fedora tipping edge lord" because it was 2 am and I didn't care
>Notice 1 point is taken off from my grade for that week
>Professor takes me aside after class
>Tells me that comment eviscerated his sides but to not do it again because the kid sent him an angry worded email and he can't be asked to deal with that shit
Communication Studies
>Instructor (can't even call that woman a professor) asks us to state our names and preferred pronouns
>Spends 50% of the first day of us, the students, creating the set rules of the class
>"It's your course, take hold of it!"
>MFW
>>7910513
Knowing that it's flammable =/= making the mental connection that heat causes fire, not using another fire to start it
Even if you intellectually know that, you might subconsciously not quite understand it.
>>7911296
kek. You'r sociology professor sounds like he would visit 4chan. Maybe he even sees that thread. Who knows..
(I'm not him, in case you wonder)
>>7910356
>>7910374
I get from your reaction (lol) that he fucked up really bad, but since I'm not a chemistryfag could you (or someone) explain why this is so bad?
I tried googling for "azido-propanol MSDS" but I only found this MSDS for "3-Azido-1-propanol", which looks harmless enough to me: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/MSDS/MSDS/DisplayMSDSPage.do?country=AU&language=en&productNumber=776130&brand=ALDRICH&PageToGoToURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sigmaaldrich.com%2Fcatalog%2Fproduct%2Faldrich%2F776130%3Flang%3Den
In the MSDS toxicological information it says harmless in every subsection but does note "To the best of our knowledge, the chemical, physical, and toxicological properties have not been thoroughly
investigated". Is it actually deadly toxic and just not listed on the sheet?
Fuck
>chemical lab
>we are tight on equipment because students are idiots breaking shit and uni is poor and stingy
>zero safety equipment
>no emergency locker
>10M HCl and H2SO4 1L bottles
>just pour it directly into test tubes
>TA can't remember or don't care that you don't pour water into acid
>she has acid burn spots on every inch of her arms
>white spots from concentrated H2O2
>I'm the only person who can use the analytical balance (amazing piece of equipment)
>fume hoods don't work so we pour chlorophorm near the window, everybody is dizzy for the next two hours
>TAs are retarded in analytical lab
>regularly mess up the mix you are supposed to be testing so you waste three hours testing distilled water
>students are either idiots who casually work with acids or cowards like me who try not to get killed
>did I mention that nobody uses fume hoods?
>"just use your mouth instead of propipette" with 10M HCl
>heating alcohol on open flame
>heating shit in regular glass instead of fireproof
I dropped out, fucking nightmare.
>>7911640
>10M HCl and H2SO4 1L bottles
>just pour it directly into test tubes
>TA can't remember or don't care that you don't pour water into acid
>we pour chlorophorm near the window, everybody is dizzy for the next two hours
>"just use your mouth instead of propipette" with 10M HCl
>heating alcohol on open flame
>heating shit in regular glass instead of fireproof
>>7910513
who doesnt know that everything this poster has posted has been bullshit
>>7907365
A PhD is basically the same as reading the manual. Just you reead graduate books and papers (if you don't just do that and do research instead, you should save money and do that)
>>7911640
ahhhh..............
>10M HCl and H2SO4 1L bottles
>just pour it directly into test tubes
>TA can't remember or don't care that you don't pour water into acid
nope
>>7911640
Crikey! I thought I had experienced a lot of crazyness, and I have contributed above, but you sure take the biscuit here.
I was shot down when I suggested we should inform former students but it sounds like you should go straight to the authorities.
Speaking of which there are cases where things were exposed in media but the university was somehow able to keep the lid tightly shut. One ugly case is the Rosenborg laboratory where former students have died like flies.
>>7911737
>who doesnt know that everything this poster has posted has been bullshit
Your doubt is commendable and /sci/entific. The anonymity here means both that you cannot tell and also that I have nothing to gain by lying. I have provided one link to a story that for once I was not involved in: the troubles at the Rosenborg laboratories, a problem that brewed for about 40 years.
It is well known amongst researchers that labs are dangerous and even PhD comics hint at this.
>>7911807
>>7911710
Wish I was shitting you. TAs had some insane GPA too, something like 4.0 equivalent, which is really hard to achieve here, but were utterly retarded in a lab.
Now that I think about it, aside from minor acid burns nobody got seriously harmed for the two years I was there.
>>7911829
>eastern europe
To be honest, it was just our department that was particularly shitty. Higher ups knew, but just didn't give a fuck, it's not like we ever had particularly high safety standards.
If you survive all of that though, you get to be like our lab techie
>dead inside eye stare
>pouring shit without a funnel without spilling a drop, measuring shit by eye with amazing precision
I suppose not a lot of people get to see a guy just pouring HCl from the bottle and stopping at precisely 10cc.
>>7911596
My 50 year old Bio professor has visited so I wouldn't be surprised a sociologist has popped in to see what's up.
>we work with Vibrio cholerae in our lab; the bacterium responsible for fatal diarrhea "cholera" in poor warm countries with poor sanitation (India etc.)
>some student there doing slave lab work for some time now. Just basic lab stuff in order for her to qualify for a master thesis (that's how my uni rolls)
>one day she drops a bottle full of V.cholerae. It
breaks and she gets a drop of it on her lip.
>out of reflex, she licks the drop off her lip
>she nows that she fucked up
>even though she was told, that if anything happens, she has to tell. Nobody will be mad
>She doesn't tell. She cleans the mess. Does as if nothing had happened.
>She doesn't come the next day calls in and says that she's sick
>Supervisor tells her she should rest and jokingly asks if she infected herself with Vibrio
>n..no..haha
>..ok. It's ok if you did, though. You just have to tell.
>Sure. Ok. I see you when i get better
>After some days spent on the toilet she finally decides to go to the doctor
>She has to tell him the story because at this point she is finally worried enough to do so
>Lab gets called. We can tell doc exactly what strain it was and what medication would be necessary for threatment.
>Some dudes come by for safety expection.
>Huge panic, because a student just got fucking cholera in austria
>girl never did do her masters thesis in our lab out of embarrassment
>>7907968
>I don't tell those, my life is far more interesting than most of the stuff you will find in fiction.
Why don't you share with your dear friends on sci?
Also, you must be living in a shockingly expensive area if a 40,000 salary is not enough for you to move out. Maybe it's because I'm from Ireland, but 40,000 euro here, which is roughly the same amount in dollars, is enough to support a family of four once you're not in the middle of Dublin City.
>>7906899
I did this in the UK at age 16.
Also to contribute I fucked up big time when making an aldehyde and started getting plooms of dichromate because I didn't check the glassware properly.
>freshman chem lab
>girl spills some solution all over her clothes during a lab period
>freaks out, starts screaming, running towards the shower while taking her shirt off
>professor has to calm her down and inform her that NaCl solution is just salt water
>sixth form, AQA chem 4
>Back titration with high molarity sulphuric acid
>class dunce is pouring acid into the burrete while holding the burrete in his hand
>valve isn't shut
>acid all over his shoes, patchy holes and rended leather everywhere
>>7911640
>"just use your mouth instead of propipette" with 10M HCl
>>7905070
i scrolled 3/4 down the thread before i realized what the fuck the TA did holy shit im crying
>>7913010
Poor girl... Honestly, at least she paid attention to the safety briefings.
Whew, these stories remind me that despite my socially challenged university, we didn't have that many goof-ups in the lab. The sad part is that I feel like I was the worst prepared in terms of managing multiple systems(?) processes at once.
>>7907113
Badump bump
I remember once in high school chemistry I was kind of auto-piloting a lab and filled a beaker all the way to the top with some chemical that I was only supposed to use a tiny amount of. The teacher saw me and got so mad, his face went beet red and he told me to get the fuck out and I was ashamed.
I TA'd various chem labs while doing my masters, have a couple stories.
>First day of lab, showing students typical safety video
>Has some gross images of what acid will do to your skin or eyeball
>Girl faints when gross images are shown, hits head on counter and knocks out tooth
>We now read a disclaimer before we show the videos
>Students are doing lab using a more elaborate than normal distillation setup
>Step into hallway for a minute to talk to professor
>Student clutching red paper towel over hand comes out into hallway
>"Anon, I cut myself."
>He's white as a sheet. I send another kid with him to the infirmary
>The kid literally made two complete circuits of the lab, leaving a blood trail everywhere he went
>Sigh and get bleach
>>7913271
Shouldn't your students know where the damned safety equipment is, so they don't circle the lab twice looking for the eyewash station, or a fire blanket while anon 2 stands there, oxidizing.
>>7911596
>Community college CHM 101 lab
>First day we were told no chemical we would be working with would even require gloves
>I personally feel cheated.
>about half way through semester, working with pentane for rate of evaporation test.
>Mexican girl treats squirt bottle like a cock and sprays pentane up the front of her shirt
>Freaks out and throws her shirt off screaming professors name and runs over to safety shower and pulls the lever.
> Lab originally was not a lab so no drain installed, floods lab about an inch before it shuts off, lab cancelled, got full credit for just showing up pretty much.
>Saw this poor Mexicans tits on the way out when we all got shuffled out, while she was crying hysterically under the shower.
Best day at CC ever. Can’t think of pentane without getting a chub and laughing.
>>7904926
>Bio 101. Just a general bio credit filler
>teacher puts up a greater than sign on the board
>kid says "Its facing the wrong way"
>teacher says "whoops, my bad"
>goes to erase and stops
>says out loud "wait a minuet, the teeth of the alligator wants to eat the bigger number right?"
...
I just sat there in disbelief. The teacher had it right the first time, but jesus. Community college really showed its stripes that day
>>7911115
>>7911296
>>7911640
Fuckibg kek
>>7909930
Thats what engineers do, other than suck each others dicks of course.
>>7913335
Showed whose stripes? The bio teacher or the student?
You shouldn't be too mad at the bio teacher. Legitimately (from undergrad student), professors are too quick to take corrections from students because they are very often accurate corrections. He was probably functioning on habit and then had to once-over his understanding of the sign to make sure he didn't fuck up.
Everyone's understanding of symbols is different. Some people still think of alligators because that's the understanding they've had since elementary school. Doesn't mean the dude is an idiot. The student is the retard for correcting a professor without making sure his correction was actually correct.
>>7907094
Why didn't you just pour a gallon of sodium thiosulfate juice over it
>>7913376
Was more talking about the student. The teacher did pause for about 10 seconds to think about it, but i have had bigger brain farts than that.
The student was very quick to try and prove the teacher wrong, then was slow to admit he was wrong.
>>7911851
Survival of the fittest
>>7913178
My high school chem teacher had a shirt he brought to safety day of where he tried that and failed.
>>7911613
Not that anon but azides are notoriously unstable and prone to spontaneous detonation (hence the reinforced fum cupboard). The "stability and reactivity" section of that MSDS is lacking.
Anyone have a problem with African immigrants and these weird fucks who keep shouting out the answer to problems in a math lecture?
>evaluating path integrals in a TQFT
>expand action near the classical vacuum
>evaluate fermion Gaussian integral
>a term like [math]\text{Tr} \left(I + i\gamma^{\mu}\partial_{\mu} + M\right)[/math] comes out
>ask thesis supervisor about what do with the infinite constant arisen from the trace over the infinite-dimensional identity
>"Dude just ignore it lmao"
>>7911115
Similar story, except it was a fetal pig testicle and I didn't have the privilege of seeing it happen, just heard about it.
Some time later they did away with the pig dissections.
>>7913799
>>"Dude just ignore it lmao"
my god
>>7911287
>only allowed ~20 mL in the entire building at a time
what the fuck kind of uni do you work at that controls EMS stocks
i cleaned out like 10 mLs of ten year old EMS myself while preparing for a screen last year before buying more, and we ordered another gram a couple months ago for a different screen
fire that undergrad though
>>7911640
>10 Molar acid
>Just pour it
>Pipette by mouth
>>7907080
did he not notice the loud sucking noise it must have been making?
>>7904926
>tfw no hair fires and high molar acid in my high school
High school truly is baby sitting, they really should make it more focused for different student types.
>>7907777
checked
they're called drawstrings, btw
Not exactly /sci/ but,
>be Sioux pilot
>tell a couple of fresh maintainers that you can 'push-start' it if you spin the rotors fast enough by hand
>get in and they start running in circles trying to spin the rotors
>'faster! faster!'
>Engage the mags and hit the starter for a really short time
>it chugs into life
To this day they still believe they push started a helicopter
>>7914579
The loud gushing water in the sink must have also slipped the TA's and his minds
>>7913856
are you that anon from Plano again?
>http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Dare-to-Eat-Perserved-Pork-Lands-Teen-in-Hospital.html
I swear, the longer I live in Texas, the scarier Texas seems.
>>7904926
>be at organic chemistry lab
>working in pairs, using Büchner funnels
>we use two gas outlets: vacuum for filtration, and air to easily pick the filter paper
>couple of potheads by my side are having problems with their equipment
>"shit just won't suck in"
>their filter paper is wiggling, which means they had opened the air outlet
>oh boy, this gonna be good
>TA is busy, so they leave the thing on while they wait
>20 minutes later, the TA comes to their place and checks their equipment
>her face turns white and she quickly closes the gas outlet
>they had actually opened the nitrogen outlet
>windows were closed and fume hoods were off
>one of them literally says "bitch, it's not like we aren't breathing nitrogen all the time, chill out"
>tfw both got suspended from organic chem lab
>>7914665
I don't believe I am, but I am from Plano yes.
Texas isn't that bad, at least not around here.
>>7914790
>windows were closed and fume hoods were off
did the TA get fired?
>>7906899
We did that in Australia. I guess we aren't as paranoid about literally everything as Americans are.
>>7907968
you sound like you make an annoying ass of yourself on a daily basis. Allow me to knock you down a peg by telling you that everyone just wants you to stop talking about yourself.
>>7911785
>all a PhD is is reading the manual
you are literally crazy.
>>7911640
what the fuck? what university was this?
>>7916324
It's an American university because it sounds crappy
![media%2F2be%2F2be567e8-e988-4b63-822e-be73dc687b5b%2FphppN4QuL[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/ngvrNXV.png "media%2F2be%2F2be567e8-e988-4b63-822e-be73dc687b5b%2FphppN4QuL[1].png")
>>7904926
>be in senior year high school "engineering" class
>class didn't have any prerequisites for some reason, so it filled with seniors trying to find an easy class
>problems like pic related come up halfway through
>trigonometry is a must
>inept teacher trying to explain trig to students that should REALLY know it by now
>"so we have [math]tan(x) = \sqrt 2[/math]"
>"to get x, all we need to do is divide by tangent to get [math]x = tan^{-1}(\sqrt 2)[/math]"
>mfw i have no face
> be 14
> had a massive interest in organic chemistry
> got a book of experiments and started amassing commercially available chemicals like magnesium sulfate and sodium hydroxide
> my grandfather was a farmer and gave me nitric acid (can't even remember what farmers used it for, I think it had something to do with cleaning out pasteurization tanks), concentrated formaldehyde and ammonium nitrate.
> mom worked at a pharmacy and mentioned the pharmacist I was looking for chemicals
> he was a really old dude from back when pharmacists were the real deal
> gave me concentrated sulfuric acid, potassium permanganate, and oxalic acid. They were in vintage bottles circa 1940's with sweet imprinted labels, but he poured it into bottles because he didn't want to part with them.
> scrooge had chloroform but he wouldn't give me any
> do a lot of experiments working with potassium permangate, making salts with interesting colours
> read in chemistry books that acid base reactions are exothermic
> how exothermic
> calculate stoichiometric quantity of NaOH needed to neutralize however many moles of sulfuric acid
> literally pour a beaker of sodium hydroxide pellets into a beaker of H2SO4
> reactions superheats and starts flying all over the place
> cover eyes and start stumbling backwards terrified
> open eyes
> stains on the concrete all around me in the garage
> miraculously it all missed me
> 15
> doctor won't prescribe me sleeping pills because I'm too young
> gather all the chemicals and apparatus for a synthesis of chloral hydrate
> piece of important glassware breaks shortly before I'm ready to commence and give up
> realize years later that the evolved chlorine gas with no proper outlet could have badly maimed my respiratory tract
I'm a pharmaceutical chemist now and I still have all my old chemicals and glassware locked up at home. I think messing with different ideas would be more better now that I actually know what I'm doing, I'll miss the spark of exploration tho
>>7916427
Aw, you would love the book Uncle Tungsten.
>>7916443
By Oliver Sacks because I'm an idiot and didn't include it.
>>7916443
I'm mostly grateful that my parents were so understanding and actually helped me acquire so many different things (I used to save up money from birthdays/christmas and they'd order stuff from ebay for me. I even had a magnetic stirrer/hotplate at one point, but it broke because it was a shitty cheap chinese model). Though it helps that I live in Europe where science isn't as stigmatized. I was also an only child and they had high hopes for my academic development and wanted to encourage my interest in science.
I haven't heard of that book, though I've read Man who Mistook his Wife and a bit of his autobiography. I'll check it out.
>>7916427
>how exothermic
KEK i already knew where this was going before i finished
>>7916448
>Though it helps that I live in Europe where science isn't as stigmatized
a moment of silence for us muricans
>>7916453
I read before that in some American state it's illegal to own a conical flask without a license. It sounds awful.
>>7916381
wait im confused are you appalled at the fact that high school seniors in an "engineering" class didnt know how to trig or that your teacher said "divide by tangent" which isnt quite correct?
>>7913799
what's the T in 'T'QFT stand for?
>>7916473
Topological
>>7916337
If you bothered to read, eastern europe
>in chemistry class
>cooling beaker under regular running faucet
>friend says: "you know distilled water's really expensive?"
There was also a water distiller right in front of him.
>>7916458
Mostly the divide by tangent. I approached him afterwards about it and I could not convince him that inverse tangent was a function. He thought it was some miraculous constant.
>>7907722
>Life is never simple, but at least I am simply alive. :)
>>>/reddit/
>>7916473
trisomic
>>7916493
He was probably thinking of deionised water
>>7913335
that's just petty on your part
why the fuck does it matter? that's such a trivial thing, there is no real reason why the greater/lesser signs look that way
let him remember it in a retarded way, it doesn't matter
>>7904986
I would have loved to do shit like that in highschool. We couldn't even pop hydrogen balloons because the teacher couldn't make the black apes in my classroom shut the fuck up and revoked all experiments for the rest of the year.
Fellow student, working with conc H2O2. Not using pipette. Some drops fell on his Doc Martens. And promptly sizzled through the leather and started flesh!
>>7907787
>>7907790
>>7907804
Stop.
>>7907790
Get out of this board, degenerate pedophile. Weeaboos are a burden on society.
>>7904926
>so many girls getting hair caught on fire
Sounds to me like that is a direct problem with the school, teachers, and proper safety equipment. Like those shop classes where hippies get their scalp and face degloved when their hair gets caught in the lathe. Lack of safety equipment and safety methods is to blame.
This is especially true when you are teaching the ignorant. They already rely on you for teaching them safety. Thus, they think everything is fine, even when the person in charge is fucking it up royally.
>>7917481
He should've made a oxygen/hydrogen balloon and told everyone who paid attention to stick their fingers in their ears.
>>7919709
Last I heard they outlawed this because of the decibels of the explosion
>>7905389
I worked in a lab where we had Gold Shield brand undenatured 95% ethanol. No benzene, no nothing. Never thought to drink it, I was over 21 and preferred beer anyhow.
>>7914638
I'm dying
This reminds me of a story about my own stupidity
>in physics lab doing circuits (high school)
>connect like 4-5 batteries in a row in a circuit and close the circuit (nothing but wires and batteries)
>teacher tells us to go to some other room with free space to show us some bullshit analogy
>forget i made the circuit earlier
>20-25 minutes later come back to the room
>some of the batteries had burst and some grey hot thick liquid had oozed out
>over the folder of my lab partner
When the teacher was trying to find out what happened to punish me or whatever i just claimed the wires to the batteries had accidentally touched when we left and managed to get away with it...
Also in some other circuits lab we were given different lengths of copper wire to test resistivity, and i found out that if you grabbed a couple batteries and got a really short piece of copper, it would eventually turn red hot and it could cut cleanly through anything. So me and some friends started cutting other people's pens and pencils, keks were had.
>>7905312
no you can't. go home you're drunk
>>7916427
As hilarious as this is, I have to commend your interest and passion of organic chemistry at such a young age. I fucking love orgo but it took my until college to realize it
>>7920545
sounds like you and your friends ride the short but desu senpai
>>7921406
*short bus
your butt is also short I presume
>>7921406
i was like 12-13, give me a break
>took two chemistry classes in highschool
>they had a lab with all sorts of shit
>literally never saw anyone using it never
>never used it myself
>whole class was book work and tests
i guess it's why I don't like chemistry now
>>7920107
>95% ethanol
>No benzene
Of course not. You can distill an ethanol/water mixture up to 95 % purity. Only if you want to go higher you need benzene.
>tfw not studying chemistry and getting to watch people almost killing themselves
I only get to ta math classes for cs kids, which also yields some amusement
>physics class in secondary school about induction
>the set up is a power source connected to a magnet-coil apparatus that makes a magnet spin
>I am discussing about Lorentz Force Law with bro tier homeroom teacher who also taught maths, physics and chemistry for us
>Seriously a huge inspiration for me since he always had time to pander my weird questions and basically taught me high school level shit every now and then when I was bored
>Explains that the orientation of the apparatus - cant remember what it looked like, it spun faster with higher voltage - and the direction of current define the direction of the rotation
>As my group finished the experiment, he hands us a AC/DC power source to test the thingy with AC
>The other guys were really bored so as he went to assist the rest of the class, they start to tinker with the power source and the wiring
>"Hey anon, come over here and check this thing out"
>As I turn towards them, they quickly connect close the circuit using my finger as a medium
>It just so happens that my finger has an open cut from House Economics that day, and they hit the copper wires into it
>I immediately pull my finger away, I can feel the shock in my whole hand and wrist
>I look my numb finger and it twitches about three times uncontrollably
>Feeling returns into it after about 10 seconds
Those guys really did do some "interesting" experiments: they used unmarked light bulbs and a 12V DC power source and determined that even though a set up of 1, 2 and 3 bulbs lead into a short-circuit, 4 bulbs staid lit so the voltage of the bulbs had to be 3V. Also the teach managed to fail the "sodium into a bucket of water" experiment and quite lot of it ended up on the floor. I sat from ~4 meters from the bucket, got a tiny bit of hot water into my hand, but at that point I was too busy reacting to the loud bang the sodium made.
>>7905312
My teacher used 3 molar HCl to add to sodium thiosulfate to show an increase in the rate of reaction with different variables.
Shit was scary to pour out.
we used to set fire to the gas taps, fun times
>>7905389
>getting drunk of iso propanol alcohol
Great way to fuck you shit up
>tfw all your labs only work with heavily diluted acids
Feels like I got cucked
>>7904926
I was TA'ing a gen chem class and one of my students tried to take his glass plate out of the oven with his bare hands, somehow forgetting it'd been in there at 400F for 30 minutes, and yelled "OW ITS HOT" before dropping it.
I had to take and TA Orgo II at the same time (the lab coordinator's reasoning was 'it'll be fresh in your mind') and the grignard reaction wasn't working so my lab partner and I were swirling it forever. I wanted to do it more vigorously so I corked it, forgetting that A) the reaction would evolve gas B) the glassware was incredibly old and frail C) the stopcock wasn't lubed and wouldn't pressure release. It can't have been more than half a second between when it started bubbling and when the bottom exploded. Needless to say I warned my students not to make the same mistake.
Finally we had a guy using a rotovap on some peroxides, forgetting that crystallized peroxides are contact explosives. He didn't lose an eye or anything, but they had to pick glass out of his face.
Industry stories are fun too.
>>7922590
>Industry stories are fun too.
This isn't mine, this one is third hand told to my class from a professor who, before entering academia, was a machinist by trade. The story in question comes from him working in a machine shop at General Motors in the 80's.
So, in every job, there's always a fuckface. It's pretty much inevitable, there's probably some universal law about it. This machine shop was no exception; it too had a fuckface. Let's call this fuckface Joe. I don't remember if that was his actual name, but it honestly doesn't matter.
Joe was an alcoholic. He was a year from full retirement, back when that actually meant something, and firing him would be so much work and effort that management just put up with him under the knowledge that he'd be gone soon anyways. Now, I don't know how many of you anons have been on the inside of a machine shop before, but alcohol and machine shops don't mix very well, especially when combined with an overinflated sense of capability. Joe, however, insisted on combining all three of those traits.
One day, just before lunch time, Joe was given a task. Joe didn't like this, because he was hungry and only slightly drunk and wished to be more drunk and less hungry and this task was going to take a minute and possibly postpone Joe's lunch. The task in question involved milling this massive hunk of steel; I don't remember what it was going to eventually be, but at the moment it was mostly just an unworked billet. So Joe grudgingly puts it on a cart, brings it over to a mill, and uses the shop crane to pull it onto the mill table. One thing Joe does not do, however, is strap the billet down. It's practically two tons of raw steel, Joe rationalizes, there's no way it needs to be strapped down.
>>7922752
So Joe goes into doing what he's told to do and starts milling the steel billet so that he can be done and go to lunch and get more drunk and less hungry. He's got the mill at a low RPM with high torque, doing whatever it was, when lo and behold stiction is broken and the billet starts to move. Slowly at first, but getting fast each second. This 2 ton hunk of steel starts spinning around, only attached to the table by the millhead, and Joe freaks the fuck out, grabs the handle he was holding on to and literally climbs on top of the mill to get away from this billet before it comes loose and crushes him.
And so, it is lunch hour at the GM machine shop, and you've got Joe the semi-drunk alcoholic alone in the shop perched on top of a mill like a cat stranded in a tree screaming his head off because underneath him a 2 ton hunk of steel is rapidly spinning around threatening to come loose and become one hell of a projectile and he couldn't reach the shutoff safely to turn it off. Another employee heard the ruckus, came in, saw the sight, and ran to the breaker to cut the power to that section of the machine shop to turn the mill off and let Joe down.
Joe got suspended without pay for a month.
>>7921774
IT'S A PUN ABOUT ELECTRICAL SHORTS
>>7904926
When I was in high school we were making soap. Some kid spilled hydrochloric on his hand and his reaction was "whoa"
Funniest shit ever
>first PHYS 131 lecture, 2 weeks ago
>simple question posed, with a diagram that pretty much asks "If a runner drops a ball, will the ball go backwards (A), straight down (B), or keep the forward momentum it had and land at the runner's feet? (C)"
>only 52% get C, most of the rest choose B
>class discussion allowed
>quiz is then done again
>now 58% get C, and the number who got A actually went up
I CAME TO UNIVERSITY TO LEARN QUANTUM PHYSICS
HELP
>>7922937
Wow. That question really floored people?
>>7922937
Sounds like high school. Seek your advisor about test-outs
>>7922937
I could understand someone visualizing it and mistakenly guessing B, since if you take air resistance into account plus the fact that the ball is likely less massive than the human, it loses forward speed more quickly.
>the number who got A actually went up
That's just retarded tough
>>7922752
>He was a year from full retirement, back when that actually meant something
>back when that actually meant something
Shut the fuck up
>>7922942
YES
I AM TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM WHOLE NEW LEVELS OF IRKED THAT I AM BY FAR THE BEST EDUCATED ON PHYSICS OUT OF ANYONE IN THE CLASS
>>7922944
They have a zero-tolerance policy. If you don't get the highschool NCEA results you need (NCEA is very tricky and strange by the way, I've seen someone clever fail a year and someone stupid get the NCEA equivalent of straight As) for a particular course, there's no way to get into that course and you have to take the prerequisite.
Even if that prerequisite contains nothing about physics you don't know and extends your degree by a year.
>>7922953
But it was just a simple question of potential/kinetic energy on a sum of mass effected by earth's gravity. Certainly people are not this dumb
>>7923114
They are.
I'm one of the only people if not the only one who is unwillingly in this class, and I've been trying for weeks contacting loads of people to get out of it, but everyone's just like "anon, we can't let you into PHYS 114, you don't have the requirements! But since you already know everything in PHYS 131 you'll get straight As, isn't that good?".
Oh gee, straight As in a high-workload course that I learn nothing from and extends my degree by a year, what great compensation!
And honestly I'm not sure I can get straight As in a course that I hate.
>>7923114
People are. Don't forget what the current generation of students are these days.
>in orgo lab
>there's this one Indian guy who never wears PPE
>like I'm not even a TA but I'd tell him to put on gloves at the very least because hey it's fucking dangerous
>like he would only ever wear his lab coat and put on googles when the professor caught him
>working with 10 molar H2S04 for some reaction
>remind indian to at least put on some fucking gloves before he burns himself and goes to the hospitial
>he tells me fuck that and he'll do as he pleases
>not two second later does he pour his own H2S04, which the professor/ TA forbids, does he spills a fuck load all over his bare hand
>stare at him for a moment like you dumb mother fucker
>see him start screaming in pain
>apparently the only reason he didn't put on PPE was because he thought he could get done faster
>his hand is now super fucked
>>7923146
Every generation says this.
>>7904926
>mfw seeing someone measure a curved surface with a ruler
>>7904926
>some chem lab I can't remember as this was years ago
>I have no idea why but this kid constantly brings a bottle of coke zero into the lab
>professor constantly telling him don't bring drinks into the lab
>he keeps fucking doing it
>like every fucking week
>he's my lab partner and I tell him he's going to get something in his coke that's going to kill him
>he tells me that it's not the amount but the dosage or some stupid bullshit
>professor tells me that if he brings the coke again next week he's going to deduct points from our grade
>tell him don't bring it or just put it in his fucking bag
>tells me I can fuck off
>fucking had it at that point
>next week he brings it
>professor deducts points
>I slip a laxative into his drink
>dude has to keep shitting like non stop
>he tells me he thinks something might have fallen into his coke
>tell him maybe he shouldn't bring it maybe something got into it. You know the whole dosage thing...
>next week he doesn't bring his coke to the lab
Fuck you Kevin why is lab safety such a hard concept for you to understand.
>>7923170
That should just be a ban from all labs
>>7923128
What are the reqs for 114
>>7923171
Well of course. As we progress in technology we lose in intelligence. Everyone thinks because they can google something they are intelligent. But the loss of critical thinking over the past 3 generations is staggering.
I currently tutor in the mathlab at my third-tier university (just above community college). I have people come in who are taking Calc 2 and 3, and have no idea how to add fractions, or how to solve for x in an equation like 3y / x = 4, or what the graph of sin(x) looks like. It's difficult to explain how to absolutely idiotic the students are. The worst is that most of them don't even know how stupid they are being, and don't actually want to learn anything, and because the level is so low for the general courses they just have to pass and then no one cares anymore. The math classes are actually decent once you get past the calculus series and linear.
>This one airhead came in every day last semester for pre-calc
>I have no idea how she passed it, but I guess standards are pretty low
>This semester she's in Calc 1
>A few weeks ago
>textbook has a proof of the sum rule for derivatives using the difference quotient definition of a derivative
>After the proof it says to do exercise 43
>"anon, where is exercise 43?"
>I go to the end of the chapter three pages later and find exercise 43
>"this is exercise 43. It wants you to do a proof of the difference rule for derivatives.
>It will be exactly like the proof here except with a minus sign"
>I go help someone else
>Come back - "did you get that?"
>"I don't know what they want me to do....."
>I sit down and explain - she goes, "yeah, yeah, I understand, yeah"
>"Okay, work the first step." blank_stare.jpg
>"Do you know what a proof is?"
>"Nooo....???"
>I explain what a proof is. "Can you tell me what a proof is?"
>She parrots my exact words (obviously has no clue)
>"Can you explain in your own words?"
>"Nooo.....???"
>explain proof again in three year old language
>she still doesn't get it
>give up and just make her copy the proof but put in a minus sign
How do people like this get into college to begin with? Morons.... some days I think genocide is a pretty attractive option.
>>7923202
Safety is a golden rule in science. Those whom don't follow it are doomed to fail. Even the forefathers of modern physics took safety for what it was considered at the time in the highest regard.
>>7923198
>amount does not correlate with dosage.
Fuuuuuuck me are you serious.
>>7923280
I think he meant that old saying nothing and everything is poisonous it's the dosage that matters
>>7923273
Was she Hispanic?
>>7923291
Well yeah the composition of the body ingesting come sin to play but even the smallest dosages can have effect on a body. The safest route it steer clear in the first place. That kid was an asshole.
>>7913010
I mean, yeah, it's just saltwater, but if I weren't educated at all in chemistry and they told you to use the wash station and to IMMEDIATELY take the contaminated clothes off, I'd react similarly.
That girl deserves praise, not to be made fun of. Chemistry BS here
>>7923273
I'm at a meh school for my MS due to bad GPA in undergrad. the grad stuff is fine here, but I'm worried about some of the undergrads...
there was this kid I tutored, a college freshman, who had trouble with babby-tier algebra and had to slowly work through even basic arithmetic. this is a kid who wants to major in engineering.
hold me tight, I can feel the cold closing in around me
>>7905070
I don't understand
>>7923427
Nope. I don't think she was pure American though. My best guess is that she's second generation central European.
>>7923518 A lot of the engineers who come in for differential equations never learned arithmetic because, "we can just plug it into the calculator." Uh huh. When an "engineer" needs to plug 5 * 8 into his calculator we've got problems.
>>7905296
Kek
>>7923270
knowledge and critical thinking are not the same thing. Being able to outsource a nearly infinite amount of information you could load onto a RAM chip in your brain isn't the same thing as having critical insight into how problems should be solved. People are not getting dumber, more dumb people are being pushed into universities
>>7923532
It's read delta x over delta y, where "delta" just means "the change in." So the whole thing means
>the change in x / the change in y
You can't cancel "the change in," because it's not a quantity. It's like trying to cancel the sines in sinx / siny... it makes absolutely zero mathematical sense, and indicates the person doing the calculation has no idea what's going on.
This one time me and this antisocial guy were in lab and I asked to hand me a beaker but was just shooting everyone lol,
>>7905354
So what happened to her? I'm pretty sure you don't just call the teacher over and make her apologize in a situation like that, so did she get charged with something?
>>7923541
Good point. But I find that the speed at which one can also pull from past experience to come to a conclusion on present issue to be critical thinking as well.
>>7907160
Fucking "le science may may" faggot
>>7907722
>the next time some one tells I'm way too smart for where I am in life
Holy shit fedora, is this bait?
>>7907887
Naw man, it was just kinda dry is all, never start laughing all the sudden, just sit confused for a little while.
>>7907968
Oh so it is bait. Literally no ones life is interesting at this point in history, everyone just accepts the laws put out be the equally miserable government and no ones really sure why they do what they do. The reason we like tales of heroes who like monsters is because, to us, we were fighting monsters. We were warriors battling snarling beasts and traversing mountains, all the while getting attention from women and respect from children. Now you just sit at your desk job and send big brother checks so he doesn't take your house away.
>>7905098
He does have a point. Perhaps he wants it in more of a layman's terms: too often are PhD dissertations never read by anyone except for a couple people.
>>7905354
Fake and gay.
>>7916427
I've always admired Woodward. My organic/ synthesis professor studied at Harvard with him and E J Corey. He told us a few stories about how Corey hated that they treated Woodward like a God, although if you've ever seen his Vitamin B synthesis, it's a breathtaking. That guy was one of a kind.
>>7922752
I've got a few gruesome ones, and some less so.
My first industrial research job was at a Japanese coating company (in Georgia, no less), and one of the products we made was the film for otterbox cases. That stuff is 10 mil, and at a line speed of 10 m/s, standing near a flying sheet of sharp polycarbonate is like dying death from 100 cuts.
An important part of any coating line is the accumulator, which basically controls how much slack is on the film right before the end. One of my techs told me a story about a guy at his last job working in one of the cages surrounding one and getting crushed like a bug when it came down on him like a plate.
My plant manager worked at a really dangerous mom and pop chemical company called MFG, and quit after he had seen too many accidents (and someone finally died). Most of the work was with high pressure reactors, and one of the workers forgot to close a lid all the way before starting. When he opened it, he was instantly covered with this caustic powder, and inhaling it destroyed his lungs. The distant look in his eyes as he talked about seeing the guy's foaming mouth and knowing he couldn't save him still haunts me. As does all the shenanigans that go on when it comes to releasing chemicals.
A few months ago we had 10,000lbs of highly alkaline slurry which needed to be neutralized after someone fucked up a batch of material. In the words of the landfill guy, "if you dumped it like that, you would instantly turn this place into a Superfund Site, and you'd be bankrupt within the month". My boss must have forgotten how weak acid chemistry works (in his defense, he's a chemical engineer), and thought vinegar and water would be strong enough to do it. I had to show him how wrong his math was before he'd buy me a few gallons of 5M HCl. It is truly a shitshow out here in the industry, guys. Stay in academia where the equipment works and your lab budget actually covers supplies.
>>7924209
>vinegar and water would be strong enough to do it
A few lemons and it would be fine.
> Stay in academia where the equipment works and your lab budget actually covers supplies.
Paygrade is better in industry even if you may be turned into spaghetti at the wrong job.
>>7923536
It's amazing the quality differential in engineers. My boss went to LeHigh (which I guess is a pretty decent private school), and is a pretty bright guy. You can tell they had to bust their asses over there. The kids that came out of the engineering department at our nearby tech school are another story. I wouldn't trust them to engineer their way out of a plastic bag.
>>7924218
Yeah a few lemons will definitely neutralize 10,000lbs of slurry at pH 12.
