| Mistake | Check the mistakes you have made | Number of rookies who have done this
|
|---|
| Handeled volitile, smelly and/or toxic solvents or reagents (benzene, carbon disulfide, acrylates, etc.) outside of the fume hood.
| | 21
|
| Dropped a solvent bottle on the floor and it smashed
| | 13
|
| Sniffed noxious compound/gas/solvent, not waft!
| | 11
|
| Used too much toluene in a reaction and spent DAYS pumping it off
| | 7
|
| Dried Mg for Grigand open in a oven.
| | 3
|
| Started a practical session at 9am on a Monday morning (with standard lack of sleep & hangover) only to get a refreshing breath of HCl vapours.
| | 3
|
| After drying solvents with sodium, put water in the flask that still has sodium in it
| | 3
|
| Didn't check BH3 purity, or any other extremely moisture sensitive material, and recovered starting material.
| | 3
|
| Thought "This acetonitrile shortage will just blow over"
| | 3
|
| Dump HCL down the drain and cost $$$
| | 2
|
| discharge syringe with t-BuLi in open atmosphere...flamethrower!
| | 2
|
| Put solution in freezer to crystallize. Solvent was benzene.
| | 2
|
| Added stoichiometric elemental bromine using rubber syringe, brominated gasket, wondered stupidly for 4h why reaction never went to completion.
| | 2
|
| Ordered a 1g chemical for %24260, came packed with other chemical, did not see it and trashed it with box.
| | 2
|
| Didn't believe post-doc when he said "KH is much more reactive than NaH"...sink fire
| | 2
|
| Dump dry ice/acetone bath into sink, wait for maintenance to patch resulting crack.
| | 1
|
| Sniffed vial of compound to determine if ether had been removed. Compound was an allergen: sneezed until capillaries in eyeballs ruptured.
| | 1
|
| Had disposed of lithium and sodium metal all the time before, but tried to quench potassium only slightly more carefully . . . fire!
| | 1
|
| Added concentrated sulphuric acid to a mixture of acrylonitrile and sodium chloride.....whoa! within seconds the entire reaction setup (flask, thermometer, condenser) got blown off and the overhead motor flew like a missile.....
| | 1
|
| Dropped sec-BuLi bottle on floor while unloading a fridge. Bottle didn't break fortunately.
| | 1
|
| Had to sneeze whilst handling sodium - covered my mouth - gloves on fire!!
| | 1
|
| Diluted my bromine down in methanol before I added it...heat of solvation resulted in bromine to the hood
| | 1
|
| Brought in own air supply in an old bottle of tBuLi and started a fire in a drybox.
| | 1
|
| Ordered a chlorinated chemical instead of the fluorinated one. Realized it when the compound showed weird behavior.
| | 1
|
|
|
