just say no...

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musiclink213

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to glass wool. or at least use heavy duty gloves or something. i had orgo lab today, and we had to use glass wool, only my prof left out the tiny detail that it gets into your skin very very easily. so now, i have all these little pieces of glass stuck in my fingers, and i can't get them out, and if you don't know what it feels like, imagine having like 500 splinters in each finger.

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Yeah, that sucks. I used to f myself up pretty bad in o-chem lab (with acids, usually). I think o-chem lab takes about 8 years off of pre-med's lives. I got some great burn wounds and the occasional ether buzz. Ah, good stuff. :D
 
That's wierd...I've used glass wool and never gotten any pieces stuck in my fingers. At least I don't think I did...:confused:
 
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progress: one shard down, 700 more to go.
 
if you post your progress frequently...like every 2 shards...its an excellent way for you to get past the 1000 post milestone haha.
 
And here's another little fact.

After working with glass wool for about 3-4 weeks you will notice that you will get a rash up your arm from just one or two tiny splinters. Ends up it's HYPER-Alergenic.

My advice, double latex gloves!

Does the trick!
 
I still have shirts with acid holes in them from when I took Orgo lab 2 yrs ago.

Ruined one of my favorite shirts that way - although I guess it's my own fault for wearing a shirt I like to Orgo. It's dangerous in there!! :smuggrin:
 
yeah, i wear the junkiest clothes to orgallary distillichemistra that don't need washing. i know, it's nasty, but it's better than getting polka-dot holes in your clothes if you get some HNO3 powder in there.


and people people use latex gloves in lab??? :wow:

is latex even able to protect against most chemicals??? nitrile gloves are sort of the standard, i hear.
 
Originally posted by g3pro
yeah, i wear the junkiest clothes to orgallary distillichemistra that don't need washing. i know, it's nasty, but it's better than getting polka-dot holes in your clothes if you get some HNO3 powder in there.


and people people use latex gloves in lab??? :wow:

is latex even able to protect against most chemicals??? nitrile gloves are sort of the standard, i hear.

yea, i wear pretty junky clothes to lab too. i had a pair of my favorite jeans ruined. i wore them because it was the first day, and so i figured it would be safe, since we weren't going to do a lab, but i had kneeled down on the floor to get something out of my bag, and i guess someone had spilled something on the floor and it had dried but was still there, and then i washed them, and there was a big hole in my jeans.

we don't use any gloves in orgo lab. or any chemistry labs, besides research and biochem. i don't know why, it's just not done. we really should wear gloves, but i think the chem profs have this rivalry going on wiith the bio dept, they always call them wimps because they use gloves for the most mildest chemicals. it's stupi, i know.

by the way: progress update: i have almost all the shards out. i have a few left, but they're stubborn litte things and won't come out. i'm hoping to be able to get them out somehow.
 
Originally posted by g3pro
yeah, i wear the junkiest clothes to orgallary distillichemistra that don't need washing. i know, it's nasty, but it's better than getting polka-dot holes in your clothes if you get some HNO3 powder in there.


and people people use latex gloves in lab??? :wow:

is latex even able to protect against most chemicals??? nitrile gloves are sort of the standard, i hear.

Yeah, latex gloves are fairly useless, but a lot of people still use them. The key reason is that latex ones are much cheaper than the nitrile. Not exactly the place where I would cut corners!

~AS1~
 
yeah, I burned a hole in my backpack when i didnt realize i spilled acid on it.
 
A vial of nitric acid exploded in my lab partner's face one time. She was ok though because it didn't get into her eyes.
 
My orgo prof told us of his undergrad years, and he told us of how he thought it would be fun to dress like santa and use glass wool as a beard. SO he stuffed it in his jeans pocket, and got it all over his leg and stuff. Nasty stuff
 
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Originally posted by g3pro


is latex even able to protect against most chemicals??? nitrile gloves are sort of the standard, i hear.

I was under the same assumption, but looked up the specs on different types of gloves. Nitrile is more puncture resistant, but for most chemicals, like formalin, latex is more resistant to degradation. There are a few that latex is sensitive to though, but for most, it's the best option.
 
I remember orgo lab. It was fun. For some reason I always had headaches on the day of orgo lab.

Little bit of ether for the tube, a little bit of ether for me...
 
Originally posted by musiclink213
to glass wool. or at least use heavy duty gloves or something. i had orgo lab today, and we had to use glass wool, only my prof left out the tiny detail that it gets into your skin very very easily. so now, i have all these little pieces of glass stuck in my fingers, and i can't get them out, and if you don't know what it feels like, imagine having like 500 splinters in each finger.


your prof didn't tell you? :eek:

hope you feel better soon.

but yeah, i remember using nitrile gloves for o-chem labs
 
try washing your hands with cold water, that might make it easier to get the stuff out of your hands.
 
I remember cleaning up after one of those labs (currently working as a "lab manager" aka lab grunt). Somebody has swept up little glass wool fragments with a sponge, so when I go to squeeze the water out of the sponge I impale myself with tons of little fragments. Chem Dept has since decided its not a good idea to keep sponges you use to clean up any glass products.
 
We use purple nitrile gloves at my work. They suck at chemical resistance to all the things we use (sulfuric, nitric acid, conc hydrogen peroxide), but they do a cool little color change. Green = nitric exposure, brown = sulfuric exposure. Let's just say I go through a lot of pairs of gloves/day.
 
Originally posted by ForensicPath
Little bit of ether for the tube, a little bit of ether for me...

"There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge"....can anyone tell me where this quote comes from??? If so, you RULE! Read the book, it rocks :horns:
 
Orgo lab once turned my hands yellow for a week...even through gloves. Ah, the memories...riiiight.
 
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Hunter S. Thompson;)
 
So I had orgo lab on Friday mornings, and would go to work in a genetics lab afterwards. I never placed a huge emphasis on minimizing spills in orgo lab, which was probably a mistake. I was looking at an agarose gel in the UV room when I noticed that hands and the entire front of my shirt lit up in a very unnatural light. It was a little scary but mostly funny, so ditto on the shaving some years off of your life thing.
 
that quote is from "fear and loathing in las vegas"

BTW, Felipe, do you happen to TA Mamm Phys at KU? I'm taking that class.

Peace
 
We do everything in microscale....so our orgo is pretty safe...next quarter is macroscale. We can wear gloves...they only made us wear them a couple times. We did however use UV lights to view TLC plates several times....no eye shields.

I think the worst thing so far was the ether:
First I got a huge wiff of it...and got a little woozy
ME: Is this the same ether as the anesthetic?
TA: Ummm....yeah...actually ...maybe we should put that in the hood...


I usually wear my "lab pants" that i burned a bunch of holes in during gen chem.


According to my father...in his day they kept BUCKETS of benzene to wash their glassware in. Now they wont even let us get near the stuff...we're not allowed to use it at all...
 
Originally posted by Integra96
Yeah, that sucks. I used to f myself up pretty bad in o-chem lab (with acids, usually). I think o-chem lab takes about 8 years off of pre-med's lives. I got some great burn wounds and the occasional ether buzz. Ah, good stuff. :D

I think it might have been Analytical Chem that did this to me. It is a really bad sign when you are heating up concentrated nitric acid and you get the gaseous fume coming out of the beaker into your hood.:scared:
 
Originally posted by daveswafford
that quote is from "fear and loathing in las vegas"

BTW, Felipe, do you happen to TA Mamm Phys at KU? I'm taking that class.

Peace

hey man, i pm'ed you.......:horns:
 
You know those UV light tables for visualizing DNA with Ethidium Bromide? There was a study that came out that says if you turn them on and stare at them for thirty seconds a day over a two year period, you will eventually gain X-ray and heat vision, much like superman.

Remember, the pain is only temporary, the heat-vision is permenant.

:cool:

CCW
 
When I took biochem, one of the guys in lab with me was looking at something on one of those UV tables. For some reason, he took the glass cover off of it...not a good idea. He ended up with a sunburn that caused skin to peel off his face.
 
Yea, there are alot of people in my lab that have stared into UV transilluminators without protection. Result: nasty sunburn and bloodshot/tearing eyes for a week.

BTW, anyone else notice that every ochem professor is balding? Is it just me?
 
today in quant lab, i spilt some 6M HCL on my hands. not a lot, i was pouring it into the graduated cylinder, and some sloshed out. good thing i wasn't using the 12M like he said. we had a choice between using 12 M or 6M. i opted for the 6M. pretty smart if i say so myself.
 
Originally posted by premed


BTW, anyone else notice that every ochem professor is balding? Is it just me?

we have four orgo profs. in my school. one is female, and her hair is thinning, the other one has a full head of hair. another one looks like wolfman with a lot of hair and bushy beard. the other one has a really bad comb over.
 
Someone way back mentioned something about gloves, so I as my mom is an ocupational medicine physician and has to deal with chemical exposure in the workplace all the time I thought I'd share my two cents.

Latex gloves are not for chemical protection they are for biological protection, as far as I know they will protect you against very few chemicals, the pores in them are too large to block them out. Nitrile gloves are better, but even they arn't approved for all chemicals, especially solvents. We used a lot of dechloromethane in one of the labs I worked in and it immediatly went through even the nitrile gloves. I hope you guys don't use latex gloves in Orgo Lab! If you are really interested in what gloves are best for which chemicals you can get the info from the glove manufacturer.

Glass wool sucks, once I was using it and somehow managed to sit in it while wearing a pair of pants with a hole in the butt, ouch!
 
man, we don't use any gloves at all in my orgo lab. i hope i'm not spilling toxic chemicals on myself. yikes!

on a happier note, i have never destroyed any clothing in a lab. in fact, i where nice clothes a lot of the time, and they never get ruined.
 
music no wonder i havnt heard from you....we have not used glass wool yet, thank god I would hate to have that on my hand...On the other side though, we are not asked to wear gloves but many of us automatically bought some and wear them every lab period..why? well cause some of this stuff is like carcin. and we do not want to mess with it....im surprised some of you were allowed to carry ether around,,,we had to do anything with ether under the hood in case someone lit a bunsen burner or something else stupid...and yeah my professor is kinda getting some thinning of hair :).
 
We dont have bunsen burners...or anything that could make fire for that matter...but we sure did go through a lot of diethyl ether...i guess because we were making Grignard reagents...and the stuff keeps evaporating while you're working up your sample...keep having to get more.......i bet i used 150ml of anhydrous ether total.....cool lab..works much better than expected...especially without having glassware drying ovens or chemical dessicants and what not.
 
Originally posted by logos
We dont have bunsen burners...or anything that could make fire for that matter...but we sure did go through a lot of diethyl ether...i guess because we were making Grignard reagents...and the stuff keeps evaporating while you're working up your sample...keep having to get more.......i bet i used 150ml of anhydrous ether total.....cool lab..works much better than expected...especially without having glassware drying ovens or chemical dessicants and what not.

We just did that lab, when it was raining, and it turned out great! Everyone got their Grignard going :).
 
Originally posted by logos
We dont have bunsen burners...or anything that could make fire for that matter...but we sure did go through a lot of diethyl ether...i guess because we were making Grignard reagents...and the stuff keeps evaporating while you're working up your sample...keep having to get more.......i bet i used 150ml of anhydrous ether total.....cool lab..works much better than expected...especially without having glassware drying ovens or chemical dessicants and what not.

we did that on wed. but we had the ether closed, except some people didn't realize that and so we had fumes floating around, not fun. but we have to wait until next week to find out if it's working.
 
Originally posted by premed
Yea, there are alot of people in my lab that have stared into UV transilluminators without protection. Result: nasty sunburn and bloodshot/tearing eyes for a week.

The tearing is caused by the mutational change that UV light causes by cross linking DNA in the eyes. Much like what can cause melanoma. Interestingly enough, I did a pubmed search, and bloodshot and tearing for a week IS consistent with gaining heat vision.

Ill post a link to a study I found. They reported that 10 people were randomly assinged to two groups: one that wore lead protective gear while getting Xrays taken of molars at the dentist office, and one group that looked directly into the Xray machine instead of biting down on the film as directed.

The student found two results:

a) The group that was assigned to stare straight into the Xray machine became sterile after five months, they also came down with retinoblastoma within a year.

b) Immediately before they developed occular cancer, the preceeding two weeks, they experienced a remarkable ability to see through walls. All five in this group reported making remarkable financial gains in Vegas and spent a lot of time hanging outside the changing stalls at Victoria's secret. They described the last few weeks of their time before the diagnosis as "totally sweet."
 
ah yes...orgo lab!!!

i LOVED orgo lab!!! mostly cuz i got to play with caustic compounds and got to break potentially expensive equipment!!!

i broke so much stuff in orgo lab...my running 'lab tab' became a running joke in both my orgo labs! it boggles my mind that i didn't use up my lab fee and end up owing money!!!

it's also by sheer luck that the only time i started breaking equipment left and right was before i started doing the lab and after i had finished the lab! never in the middle of the lab!

chem labs are the best!!!
 
Originally posted by Cooper_Wriston
The tearing is caused by the mutational change that UV light causes by cross linking DNA in the eyes. Much like what can cause melanoma. Interestingly enough, I did a pubmed search, and bloodshot and tearing for a week IS consistent with gaining heat vision.

Ill post a link to a study I found. They reported that 10 people were randomly assinged to two groups: one that wore lead protective gear while getting Xrays taken of molars at the dentist office, and one group that looked directly into the Xray machine instead of biting down on the film as directed.

The student found two results:

a) The group that was assigned to stare straight into the Xray machine became sterile after five months, they also came down with retinoblastoma within a year.

b) Immediately before they developed occular cancer, the preceeding two weeks, they experienced a remarkable ability to see through walls. All five in this group reported making remarkable financial gains in Vegas and spent a lot of time hanging outside the changing stalls at Victoria's secret. They described the last few weeks of their time before the diagnosis as "totally sweet."

isn't that dangerous just because it's an X-ray? or was this before they knew the risks of hte x-ray? but i would still think that they would test it out on lab rats or something first before they test it on humans,
 
Originally posted by ieatmeat
ah yes...orgo lab!!!

i LOVED orgo lab!!! mostly cuz i got to play with caustic compounds and got to break potentially expensive equipment!!!

i broke so much stuff in orgo lab...my running 'lab tab' became a running joke in both my orgo labs! it boggles my mind that i didn't use up my lab fee and end up owing money!!!

it's also by sheer luck that the only time i started breaking equipment left and right was before i started doing the lab and after i had finished the lab! never in the middle of the lab!

chem labs are the best!!!


Wow...we dont have to pay for anything we break...but they take off points....if you drop your entire microscale kit...you pretty much fail... I think i'd rather just have to pay for the stuff...
 
Originally posted by logos
Wow...we dont have to pay for anything we break...but they take off points....if you drop your entire microscale kit...you pretty much fail... I think i'd rather just have to pay for the stuff...

man, i would have failed. i break so many things, i'm constantly running to the stockroom to replace things. my favorite way to break things: i put it under the faucet to wash it out, and the pressure is so strong that it falls and breaks in the sink.
 
Originally posted by musiclink213
isn't that dangerous just because it's an X-ray? or was this before they knew the risks of hte x-ray? but i would still think that they would test it out on lab rats or something first before they test it on humans,

:rolleyes:
 
Hey Cooper,

I don't know if you're trying to be funny or something. But I do worry that someone (that can't break a 20 on their MCAT's) will actually read the post and believe you about being able to see through walls. BTW, that post was not funny...at least not to me.
 
Originally posted by premed
Hey Cooper,

I don't know if you're trying to be funny or something. But I do worry that someone (that can't break a 20 on their MCAT's) will actually read the post and believe you about being able to see through walls. BTW, that post was not funny...at least not to me.

Why worry? They became sterile, after all.

:D
 
i am bumping this up because of what happened in lab today. I spilt either acetanilide or chlorosulfonic acid on my pants. luckily, they were pants that have no openings in them, so when i went to wash it off, i ended up with a hole in my pants. it's not that bad though cause they were getting kinda big on me anyway.

and we also used glass wool again today. i thought i did the right thing, i wore gloves and picked it up with tweezers and paper towels, yet somewhow, i still have all this glass wool stuck in my hands. and i didnt' get a product, so i have to go back on tuesday to redo it.
 
All I have to say about Orgo lab is: I hate Grignard.

When you're writing syntheses it's so easy, you just put Mg0/Ether draw a little arrow and voila! Why isn't it that simple in real life? WHY???!?
 
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