Rookie Mistakes - The Workup

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Verification:
MistakeCheck the mistakes you have madeNumber of rookies who have done this
lost vacuum on rotevap, flask drops, shattering into filthy water bath, extract organics from dirty water while filtering the dead bugs floating in it 20
Forgot to let the product cool to room temperature before sticking it in the ice bath. 16
removing the vacuum in the rotary evaporator withot clip in the flask, this causes the loss of products 8
Put product on rotovap at 40C and came back half an hour later to find that compound was very volatile and that flask is COMPLETELY empty 7
Poured Stir-bar into Sep. Funnel, decided to shake it anyway and shattered the funnel. 7
Filtered off the drying agent with a wrong type of funnel, resulting in the spillage of precious exctracts on the bench. 6
Poured a reaction mixture into a separating funnel without closing the tap. Recovered reaction mixture from the bottom of the fume hood. 6
During extraction, accidentally added soap solution instead of distilled water; two layers mysteriously hard to separate. 4
Try to extract product using ethanol and water as the solvent system. The result being that your product is not extracted since ethanol and water are miscible. 3
Putting a rotavap flask ob buchi for distillation and forgot to remove it. 3
Sat around waiting for an emulsion to separate...for three months. 3
Accidentally used adapter instead of stopper in sep funnel.... 2
Accidentally dropped a small sep funnel stopper into a large sep funnel. 2
Extracted NaOH aqueous layer with ethyl acetate, saponifying ethyl acetate and resulting in no separation of layers and very hot sep funnel. 2
Try to extract product using acetonitrile and water as the solvent system. The result being that your product is not extracted since acetonitrile and water are miscible. 1

Other Rookie Mistakes

Equipment Reagents Setup Quenching Rxns Workup Chromatography
Distillation Spectroscopy Cleaning Record-Keeping Accidents Miscellaneous