Lab Accidents and Stories

One of my students thought you turned off a Bunsen burner by yanking the hose off of the gas. To make a long story short, he left the gas on in a lab overnight. That could have ended badly...

Back when I was a grad student at ORNL one of my associates left his watch on when we were working on a vacuum evaporator. The power was on and it was surprisingly easy to accidentally locate the live connection. He could fly! I guess that is better than being rooted to the spot, right? Really, he could fly. He proved it a second time when we were doing something with the power source for a class IV laser. Electrons make people fly.

One student pushed a glass pipette through his hand when trying to force it through a hole in a stopper. He's actually the only person I have seen do that, though I have been told it's a common accident.

This isn't an accident or safety violation, but it relates to one. A student splashed a chemical in her eye and went to use the eye wash station. The water in the eye wash station didn't have a drain since it was for emergencies, so it was only turned on when it was tested. The water from the eye wash station ran white for a couple of minutes. We later tested it for lead (very old building). Let's just say the girl would have been better off running to the bathroom and sticking her face in the toilet than using the eye wash.

My Cousins chemistry teacher once did an experiment but he did it wrong and the windows and skylight flew out but thankfully, the students had taken refuge outside before it happened.

One of my college friends was playing with rubbing alcohol, tracing out patterns on the lab table. Then she would set one end alight to watch the pretty blue flame trace out the alcohol path. If small doodles are fun, what about large ones? My friend came up with a grand plan and enlisted another friend to go out into the hallway with the alcohol bottle and lighter. A couple minutes later, a loud 'wuff' noise and orange glow appeared through the door followed by the sound of 'Uh oh!' I learned how to properly use a fire extinguisher and managed to clean up enough where the only evidence of the experiment was a pattern of missing floor wax on the linoleum.

These stories were told from different people's point of view...