Anyone ever screw up big time while working in the lab...

[PhillyMD2006]

I think I might have broken the autoclave. Numerous people have attempted to turn it off, but there is steam spewing from it and the entire floor is a cool 85 degrees. Oops. Good thing I'm going to med school.

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[diosa428]

Haha I've never broken anything that expensive, but I did dump water all over the keyboard to my lab's computer the other day. It promptly stoppoed working. Luckily, the computer ppl at my school replaced it for free since it was school equipment.

 

[hildaluc]

I broke the big centrifuge - the one that is bigger than a washing machine. Yeah that one. Did you know that when you screw that bugger up it locks itself for 48 hours and automatically calls its own service person?

My research director had tears in his eyes (as did I).

 

[top]

Good lord...how did you break the centrifuge? those things cost like 10-25k per...

I thought it was bad when a kid near my lab took out an entire rack of those giant pipettes that you use to do like industrial titrations...each one was like $500, and he broke about 10 of em.

 

[GujuMD]

I haven't broken any thing but when I was doing immunological stain-I accidentally forgot to dilute the antibody and ended up using two vials of concentrated antibody.

 

[Will Ferrell]

hahaha. i once broke a $35 filter and it f*cked up my whole week.

keep posting stories.

 

[OctoDoc]

When I was in chemistry graduate school, I averaged a little over one "big" accident per year. The worst one involved a vacuum distillation of a compound I made, and it exploded on me. If I didn't suspect it was about to pop and so took a big step back and to the side, I would be dead. There were chunks of the hot plate on the other side of the lab. I got to use the lab's safety shower, and have a small divot in my palm from flying glass. And the dark discoloration from chemical burns took several years to fade from my arm and neck.

I was so spooked that I then traded work with other students. I would do pretty much anything (reaction, purification, or lab procedure) in exchange for someone else vacuum distilling a compound for me. It took me about three years to get over it enough to again do them myself. I still am spooked about the procedure.

 

[Scintillation]

I broke a pH meter probe (new one cost about $150 i think).

I've also screwed up expts. One time I added 15g of starch instead of 60g to the medium i was making. This wasted a week long experiment.
My fav. lab f-up is forgetting or messing up dilutions...I do these about once every three months. hahaha. usually costs me a day of work.

 

[PhillyMD2006]

When I was in chemistry graduate school, I averaged a little over one "big" accident per year. The worst one involved a vacuum distillation of a compound I made, and it exploded on me. If I didn't suspect it was about to pop and so took a big step back and to the side, I would be dead. There were chunks of the hot plate on the other side of the lab. I got to use the lab's safety shower, and have a small divot in my palm from flying glass. And the dark discoloration from chemical burns took several years to fade from my arm and neck.

I was so spooked that I then traded work with other students. I would do pretty much anything (reaction, purification, or lab procedure) in exchange for someone else vacuum distilling a compound for me. It took me about three years to get over it enough to again do them myself. I still am spooked about the procedure.

haha. that is both quite sad and hilarious.

in addition to this little autoclave incident, i nearly tipped over a CO2 tank, which needless to say, had the top popped off, would have been like launching a small missile.

 

[Bluntman]

haha. that is both quite sad and hilarious.

in addition to this little autoclave incident, i nearly tipped over a CO2 tank, which needless to say, had the top popped off, would have been like launching a small missile.

Umm...aren't those supposed to be chained to the wall.

 

[hildaluc]

Good lord...how did you break the centrifuge? those things cost like 10-25k per...

I thought it was bad when a kid near my lab took out an entire rack of those giant pipettes that you use to do like industrial titrations...each one was like $500, and he broke about 10 of em.

it was much easier than you might imagine...remember how they give you all of those reminders about balancing the centrifuge properly, making sure the rotor is properly attached, and being present while it gets up to speed? My lab partner and I were being stupid and each assumed the other had covered all the bases. The machine's incessant beeping and newfound mobility allerted us to the possibility of a problem. *gulp*

This centrifuge was a $50K machine that was about 45 days past the end of its warranty - thank god for extended service contracts.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

My big screw-up involved getting half the lab quite radioactive. I spilled S-35 all over the place when I first joined my lab and didn't realize it, spreading radioactivity all over the lab with each new instrument I touched. Fortunately, S-35 isn't a very energetic isotope, and my rad badge miraculously came back with (barely) safe exposure, but wipe tests for most of the lab were hot for a few weeks no matter how much I scoured the place with Count-Off. Not a very expensive mistake (unless you count the fact that we had to order new radioactivity), but a mortifying one nonetheless for a new grad student, since we've always been conditioned to be afraid of radioactivity.

 

[Thundrstorm]

Fortunately, I've never broken any expensive equipment, but I do idiotic things all of the time. Most recently, I dropped an experiment just as I was finishing it, after working on it over the course of 3 days.

 

[Bluntman]

Damn, this thread certainly makes me glad that I've settled into the computational side of biology and engineering!

 

[OctoDoc]

Fortunately, I've never broken any expensive equipment, but I do idiotic things all of the time. Most recently, I dropped an experiment just as I was finishing it, after working on it over the course of 3 days.

3 days? That's nothing, people do that all of the time! Try three weeks of 10-hour days, 6 days a week (me), or 3+ months (a lab mate).

 

[PhillyMD2006]

Umm...aren't those supposed to be chained to the wall.

Not when you are attempting to move them.

 

[Bluntman]

Not when you are attempting to move them.

Ohh I see. The protocol I was taught (and that is ingrained in my mind since we were working with compressed liquid Cl2 cylinders around our government clients) is that it's supposed to be chained to the wall, or you're supposed to have the protective cap in place over the regulator before any sort of transport/movement.

I've always wanted to see one fly tho...heard they can go through walls!

 

[ND2005]

Ohh I see. The protocol I was taught (and that is ingrained in my mind since we were working with compressed liquid Cl2 cylinders around our government clients) is that it's supposed to be chained to the wall, or you're supposed to have the protective cap in place over the regulator before an sort of transport/movement.

I've always wanted to see one fly tho...heard they can go through walls!

We keep two tanks. When one goes empty, we just kind of roll it by the other one, then roll the new full one into position. Then we chain them up. Probably not the safest thing in the world.

Though safer still then 90% of the crap our post-docs pull. My two favorites had to be:

-Walking in on a post-doc setting up a improv drying tool by snapping pasteur pipettes in half, duct taping the broken off ends to some tubing, then duct taping the whole apparatus into open culture tubes and hooking it up to the air-line. Oh and when I did a geiger scan of the lab I found out he'd somehow gotten that whole set-up nice and hot.

-Trying to do a wipe test on the lab, only to have one of the post-docs tell me not to check one area, b/c he'd spilled some "stuff". My response: when you spill "stuff", that doesn't mean I don't check the area...it means you need to clean it up!!!!!!

 

[witt105]

I thought I broke an inverted Microscope once... turns out I just blew a fuse AND the lightbulb at the same time.

 

[Elastase]

Everyones done some kind of dumb sh*et while working in the lab. By far the worse is when your working with animal models, and something goes wrong. Not cool

 

[MedicineNutt]

worst thing that happened to me in a lab was an explosion of a test tube!! no clue what the cause was...i just let the bunsen burner go and placed the test tube over wire guaze. Then, "BOOM EXPLOSION!"...teacher was kinda upset, but definitely not at me because he said the dude who used it before me forgot to rinse of the remaining chemical contents

maybe in another yr or so i'll have somethin better to share!

 

[badlydrawnvik]

i poured around $300 dollars of monoclonal antibodies down the drain a few weeks ago when i wasn't paying attention.

 

[OctoDoc]

worst thing that happened to me in a lab was an explosion of a test tube!! no clue what the cause was...i just let the bunsen burner go and placed the test tube over wire guaze. Then, "BOOM EXPLOSION!"...teacher was kinda upset, but definitely not at me because he said the dude who used it before me forgot to rinse of the remaining chemical contents

maybe in another yr or so i'll have somethin better to share!

It could just have been water in the test tube, or that the glass was not Pyrex and had thermal stresses inside it (Pyrex has a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion, and so doesn't suffer thermal stresses to any significant degree). In either case, rapid heating can cause the tube to "explode." That's why they say to never heat empty glassware.

Unless you saw a fireball, then it's definitely chemicals.

 

[adiddas125]

My training is in Organic synthesis and I was supposed to re-crystallize a compound in MeOH and triturate it in Ether... Well I had two beakers full of MeOH and Ether. I accidentally put the Ether on the hot plate... talk about seeing a huge flame. Not to mention giving yourself a mini heart attack. It was a good thing that there was only ~10mL at the time. Now before I put anything on the hot plate, I take a whiff of the solvent... MeOH smells like nothing to me while, Ether has this sweet earthy smell...

 

[Will Ferrell]

Ether has this sweet earthy smell...

Fear and Loathing in Organic Chemistry Lab

 

[Bluntman]

Fear and Loathing in Organic Chemistry Lab

Lol...rock on!

 

[FenderHM]

When I first started working in the lab I was making media for a b-cell line we had created with a modified receptor. My boss "assumed" I knew I was supposed to put an antibiotic in the media so he didn't list in with the other ingredients. Anyway, all our cells died and it took us forever to figure out why!

 

[Hassler]

OMG....I'm starting to worry about the future of medicine in America

Actually, I also mess up a lot of experiments, but I don't think I've ever broken something worth more than $100

 

[OctoDoc]

...I don't think I've ever broken something worth more than $100

I know it was you, Freido. You broke my heart.

 

[LJDHC05]

I broke a $300k confocal microscope. Ok, so it wasn't my fault, but one of the shutter actuators broke while I was using it. All I smelled was burning and fear. Thank Leica for extended warranties.

About 4 weeks before that, a new co-worker was using it when one of the lasers went down. Everyone gave her crap for the 6 weeks that the laser was being refurbished, even my PI.

 

[OctoDoc]

I broke a $300k confocal microscope. Ok, so it wasn't my fault, but one of the shutter actuators broke while I was using it. All I smelled was burning and fear. Thank Leica for extended warranties.

About 4 weeks before that, a new co-worker was using it when one of the lasers went down. Everyone gave her crap for the 6 weeks that the laser was being refurbished, even my PI.

Confocal microscopes are awesome! I did two-photon imaging research, and those microscopes are modified confocals.

 

[MedicineNutt]

OMG....I'm starting to worry about the future of medicine in America

Actually, I also mess up a lot of experiments, but I don't think I've ever broken something worth more than $100

medicine, oh please!
america is being messed up in so many ways...not even worth discussing on this forum. It would bring the liberals and conservs here in a heartbeat!

 

[MedicineNutt]

It could just have been water in the test tube, or that the glass was not Pyrex and had thermal stresses inside it (Pyrex has a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion, and so doesn't suffer thermal stresses to any significant degree). In either case, rapid heating can cause the tube to "explode." That's why they say to never heat empty glassware.

Unless you saw a fireball, then it's definitely chemicals.

hahaha emission of sparks, which slightly burned my fingers, ouch! other than this, never checked what kind of test tube it was (im guessing pyrex??)

 

[StevenRF]

I accidently dropped a small wrench into my UHV chamber when I was changing out an ion gauge. Anyway, it fell to the bottom, through the poppet valve, and into my ion pump. This required: a small engine crane to lift off half the machine, a dismantling of the pump, and a full cleaning to remove all the oil and greese that got put intside. All the metal seals required copper gaskets that had to be replaced from the dismantling. A month was waisted, thousands of dollars in gaskets spent, and there were leakage problems until my professor moved his lab accross country.

In the words of Borat: "HIGH FIVE!"

 

[medrad]

Damn, this thread certainly makes me glad that I've settled into the computational side of biology and engineering!

Ha, don't think you are out of the woods yet. Just recent I wiped my company's entire hour-logging database.....all records over the last 5 years. I was in agony the few hours between it happening and getting a back up mounted....

 

[novawildcat]

I have spilled concentrated sulfuric acid before on my arm. It ate a small hole in my arm that i could stick a pencil in.

I work in an industrial chemistry lab so we have some really really nast **** that I get to use. I once made some aqua regia (one of the few things known to man that can dissolve gold) and I left the hood open and walked out and forgot of the room. It realesed a bunch of nasty, very toxic gas into the room, so I couldn't go in for the rest of the day. I also left the hood open when I was evaporating thionyl chloride off (which has a 4/5 health risk rating) and I was breathing in a way too concentrated amount of thionyl chloride fumes in.

I also have overloaded HPLC columns before when I needed to do LC/MS, and at $500 a pop, the analytical chemists gets pissed when ever he has to change the column because someone overloaded it.

 

[OctoDoc]

I accidently dropped a small wrench into my UHV chamber when I was changing out an ion gauge. Anyway, it fell to the bottom, through the poppet valve, and into my ion pump. This required: a small engine crane to lift off half the machine, a dismantling of the pump, and a full cleaning to remove all the oil and greese that got put intside. All the metal seals required copper gaskets that had to be replaced from the dismantling. A month was waisted, thousands of dollars in gaskets spent, and there were leakage problems until my professor moved his lab accross country.

In the words of Borat: "HIGH FIVE!"

If you're gonna go down, go down big, and take your lab with you!

 

[Surg Path]

I think I might have broken the autoclave. Numerous people have attempted to turn it off, but there is steam spewing from it and the entire floor is a cool 85 degrees. Oops. Good thing I'm going to med school.

Never broke any equiptment, but certainly a few thousand dollars in antibodies for western's that never worked. I think my first few westerns took me through about $1K of primary antibpdy before I got it right.

Of course, now westerns always work every time

 

[TinyFish]

In Undergrad:

- Dropped 2 vials of vent polymerase down an elevator shaft (don't ask).

- Went to lab drunk at 3 am one night (embryo staging) and spilled thousands of worm larvae all over the counter.

Now:

- Mixed mice up and had to secretly genotype them by "mini-southern" to figure out which ones were which.

- Accidentally released a ton of autoclave steam INTO THE MEDICAL COLLEGE LIBRARY.

- Almost tipped over a whole Thoren unit. A whole Thoren unit that held all the breeding cages for all the investigators in the lab.

- Out of curiosity, almost pressed button on tissue culture incubator. Turned out the button is used to sterilize the entire inside of the incubator. Oops.

- "Um, oops." pretty much defines my whole research experience.

 

[OctoDoc]

In Undergrad:

- Dropped 2 vials of vent polymerase down an elevator shaft (don't ask).

- Went to lab drunk at 3 am one night (embryo staging) and spilled thousands of worm larvae all over the counter.

Now:

- Mixed mice up and had to secretly genotype them by "mini-southern" to figure out which ones were which.

- Accidentally released a ton of autoclave steam INTO THE MEDICAL COLLEGE LIBRARY.

- Almost tipped over a whole Thoren unit. A whole Thoren unit that held all the breeding cages for all the investigators in the lab.

- Out of curiosity, almost pressed button on tissue culture incubator. Turned out the button is used to sterilize the entire inside of the incubator. Oops.

- "Um, oops." pretty much defines my whole research experience.

AAAAhahahahaha! No, seriously, stay away from me!

 

[PhillyMD2006]

Right now it's close between StevenRF and novawildcat. This could come down to the wire...

 

[Surg Path]

In Undergrad:

- Dropped 2 vials of vent polymerase down an elevator shaft (don't ask).

- Went to lab drunk at 3 am one night (embryo staging) and spilled thousands of worm larvae all over the counter.

Now:

- Mixed mice up and had to secretly genotype them by "mini-southern" to figure out which ones were which.

- Accidentally released a ton of autoclave steam INTO THE MEDICAL COLLEGE LIBRARY.

- Almost tipped over a whole Thoren unit. A whole Thoren unit that held all the breeding cages for all the investigators in the lab.

- Out of curiosity, almost pressed button on tissue culture incubator. Turned out the button is used to sterilize the entire inside of the incubator. Oops.

- "Um, oops." pretty much defines my whole research experience.

scary

 

[funshine]

deleted b/c I just realized a number of you know who I am in real life...
take away point: don't fabricate results!!!

 

[Surg Path]

I'll take the leap into shame and say it:

I've fabricated data, results, everything....

to write my thesis for graduation.

I think my postdoc and PI knew. I bet the profs who evaluated my oral defense knew too...

but it was OK, because the experiments were near impossible, my thesis research was for "practice," not publication....and I was going to med school. Ironic.

I have no idea how fabricating data could ever be "OK". I prefer science to magic tricks, if for nothing else than a sense of accomplishment- even when the experiment fails.

 

[funshine]

so much for deleting my post. It's never OK to fabricate results, and doing so caused me a lot of self-imposed grief. I should've put the OK in quotes. "OK". BUT, I've always wondered how many other ppl have done this. It does occur, when you are under pressure to produce a thesis in order to graduate and your postdoc is never there.

 

[MedicineNutt]

wow, i'll never read thesis papers ever again!!!!
i never knew some were arbitrarily written.

 

[PhillyMD2006]

tsk, tsk, funshine. you better hope that someone doesn't try to repeat your results.

 

[hildaluc]

Everyones done some kind of dumb sh*et while working in the lab. By far the worse is when your working with animal models, and something goes wrong. Not cool

AHHH - animals are the worst!!!!! I worked in a lab using mice and rats where we had to hold the mice flipped over on their back with their head immobilized to deliver their doses. Sometimes they would COMPLETELY freak out and DIE!!! In your hands! Like have a heart attack or panic attack or something - can you imagine killing an animal with your hands??!?! Holy "Of Mice and Men" gone bad...

 

[PhillyMD2006]

AHHH - animals are the worst!!!!! I worked in a lab using mice and rats where we had to hold the mice flipped over on their back with their head immobilized to deliver their doses. Sometimes they would COMPLETELY freak out and DIE!!! In your hands! Like have a heart attack or panic attack or something - can you imagine killing an animal with your hands??!?! Holy "Of Mice and Men" gone bad...

Really? You must have been clenching them pretty hard. I have worked with mice for quite some time delivering doses through all kinds of methods and yet to kill one in my hands. Sedation and surgical procedures are a whole different story though.

Some of my favorite mouse stuff includes:
1. retro-orbital bleed/injection (about as fun as it sounds)
2. cardiac punctures
3. skin grafts (nothing funnier than a black mouse with a white patch of skin -- and vice versa)

 

[funshine]

tsk, tsk, funshine. you better hope that someone doesn't try to repeat your results.

Oh, I know. I'm too freaked out to contact anyone in that lab. I feel bad for the next student who gets my project. It's not that I didn't do the experiments, I just used a lot of liberty in interpreting my data and presented the sensible version that made sense to me. Unfortunately, I'm no expert in my field and got picked apart during my defense....apparently the sensible version to me is actually amazing and unheard of.

Btw, to the person who was concerned about theses being arbitrarily written....a lot of students put a ton of hard work into them and present ground-breaking stuff. Don't let the few of us guilty ones ruin your confidence in thesis papers!