| Mistake | Check the mistakes you have made | Number of rookies who have done this
|
|---|
| Forgot to stop a TLC before solvent reached top of plate.
| | 687
|
| Forgot to tare the flask.
| | 635
|
| Forgot to take the stopper off your separatory funnel and wondered why nothing was coming out.
| | 501
|
| "Lost" product while purifying it through column chromatography
| | 494
|
| Bumped product into filthy rotavap
| | 469
|
| Ran column dry
| | 467
|
| Poured a reaction mixture into a separatory funnel with an open stopcock.
| | 420
|
| Majored in Chemistry.
| | 413
|
| didn't label flask on same day, forgot what was in it
| | 400
|
| Took an NMR and saw only solvent peaks.
| | 381
|
| Thought a reaction was done when it wasn't- and isolated starting material.
| | 325
|
| Broke glassware whilst trying to clean it.
| | 324
|
| Was too lazy to dry the solvent.
| | 302
|
| Refluxed to dryness
| | 285
|
| Forgot to turn on condenser water supply.
| | 281
|
| Used all of an advanced intermediate on a single experiment
| | 265
|
| Used the wrong bottle of reagent or solvent during reaction setup
| | 264
|
| Did not take the purity of a reagent into account in amount calculation.
| | 235
|
| Made reaction without checking identity of starting material
| | 235
|
| TLC spotted below solvent level in chamber
| | 225
|
| Miscalculated by a factor of ten.
| | 212
|
| Broke the flask when scratching it.
| | 206
|
| Not enough volume left in flask to quench the reaction.
| | 203
|
| Believed an unbelievable procedure and spent days trying to repeat is, hoping it would 'save time'
| | 177
|
| Left an important compound on the bench/out of the fridge too long, found it had decomposed and had to make it again.
| | 175
|
| Put a round bottom in a large ice bath to cool and it fell over and filled with water
| | 169
|
| Forgot to weight flask before adding product in.
| | 167
|
| Forgot to add reagent
| | 159
|
| Hooked up water lines to a condenser backward
| | 151
|
| In case of product, break glass.
| | 149
|
| Discarded the wrong layer from a separation.
| | 147
|
| Trying for a while to remove the flask from the rotavapor still in vacuum conditions
| | 143
|
| Hose comes off of condensor (or out of sink) during the night and floods the lab.
| | 132
|
| Forgot to turn on vacuum before turning on rotavap motor, flask fell in bath and shattered
| | 132
|
| Ran multiple reactions in parallel, then proceeded to confuse the labels during parallel work-ups.
| | 130
|
| Forgot to disconnect vacuum hose before turning off water aspirator, tap water in reaction
| | 122
|
| After obtaining a good separation by TLC, you run a column only to find that your compound has decomposed on it.
| | 120
|
| Added a stir bar to a flask that was too large to remove.
| | 115
|
| Picked the "wrong" advisor
| | 114
|
| dropped reaction flask into silicone oil bath
| | 105
|
| Too lazy to record yield immediately after calulation and forgot after several hours.
| | 101
|
| Assumed some random bottle you found in the lab actually contained the chemical listed on the label.
| | 97
|
| Forgot to turn the nitrogen on into reaction,introduced air through septum.
| | 95
|
| Poured liquid into boiling reaction; contents erupted out of flask.
| | 94
|
| Waited for a long time for solvent to be rotavaped off but turned out forgot to turn the vacuum on when rotavaping solvent
| | 94
|
| Keeping the reagents/SM near to balance after using
| | 91
|
| Quenched the reaction without taking an NMR or a TLC to check conversion. Result: most of the precious starting material lost.
| | 88
|
| Forgot to put temperature probe in oil bath
| | 88
|
| Forgot to neutralize the reaction
| | 80
|
| Forgot to close off other reactions when using vacuum; results in dirty Schlenk lines.
| | 74
|
| Water introduced into an oil bath. Oil bath is heated above 100 degress. POP!!
| | 74
|
| Ran a gas-evolving reaction in a closed system.
| | 69
|
| forgot to turn off water suply
| | 69
|
| Added a stir bar to a flask sitting on a magnetic stir plate and the flask breaks.
| | 67
|
| Forgot that inside of drying oven door is hot, touched it, dropped glassware on floor.
| | 65
|
| Forgot to add the phenolphthalein before starting the titration.
| | 63
|
| Dropped a solvent bottle on the floor and it smashed
| | 62
|
| Broke multiple pipet tips in column while loading compound.
| | 61
|
| Contaminated compound with crap in the bump trap
| | 59
|
| Wore incorrect gloves, dissolved them.
| | 56
|
| forgot to add a catalyst
| | 54
|
| Plugged heating mantle directly into wall power.
| | 54
|
| Forgot to let the product cool to room temperature before sticking it in the ice bath.
| | 54
|
| Mix the fractions from a Chromatography and put the waste in the product.
| | 51
|
| lost vacuum on rotevap, flask drops, shattering into filthy water bath, extract organics from dirty water while filtering the dead bugs floating in it
| | 50
|
| Burned fingers while trying to pull spotting capillaries
| | 46
|
| dropped NMR tube with out the air on
| | 45
|
| Forgot to add starting material
| | 41
|
| Used boiling chips in a vacuum distillation.
| | 40
|
| Forgot to remove stirbar from reaction flask before pouring contents into separator funnel, which plugs stopcock and keeps solvent from draining out of separator funnel.
| | 40
|
| Dry ice trap on vacuum pump completely clogged with solid, didn't notice, kept turning up heat.
| | 38
|
| Set up reaction under Ar, added in reagents and forgot to add stir bar
| | 36
|
| Partially disintegrated a metal spatula in a strongly acidic reaction mixture
| | 30
|
| Condensed liquid oxygen or solid argon with liquid nitrogen. (A mistake you only make once.)
| | 29
|
| Filtered off the drying agent with a wrong type of funnel, resulting in the spillage of precious exctracts on the bench.
| | 28
|
| Used too much force opening a NMR tube and broke it (And cut yourself)
| | 28
|
| removing the vacuum in the rotary evaporator withot clip in the flask, this causes the loss of products
| | 27
|
| Dried Mg for Grigand open in a oven.
| | 26
|
| Did not show up to the lab for three months.
| | 25
|
| Trusted a fellow lab-mate's notebook without checking reference and watched as giant exotherm blew reaction everywhere.
| | 21
|
| Open both doors in air-lock chamber of glovebox
| | 20
|
| Acquired an NMR spectrum of the lock sample
| | 20
|
| forgot to make co spot in the TLC .
| | 20
|
| submitted NaCl crystals for x-ray analysis
| | 16
|
| After drying solvents with sodium, put water in the flask that still has sodium in it
| | 15
|
| Poured Stir-bar into Sep. Funnel, decided to shake it anyway and shattered the funnel.
| | 15
|
| Take 100ml 3-neck flask for 150 ml reaction mixture.
| | 14
|
| Add Pd/C catalyst to an ongoing hydrogenation without removing the H2 first: fire!!
| | 12
|
| After drying solvents with sodium, put water in the flask that still has sodium in it
| | 12
|
| didn't properly cool a bomb flask before opening, stuff shoots out everywhere
| | 11
|
| Tried to cool beer bottle quickly in liquid nitrogen, causing the bottle to shatter and beer to spray all over the laboratory.
| | 11
|
| Spent ~30 minutes troubleshooting the NMR because it wouldn't lock to CDCL3. Turned out I forgot to inject the sample.
| | 11
|
| 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.
| | 11
|
| Believed that LCMS data was real
| | 11
|
| Ran TLC without spotting plate. Didn't realize until visualization stage.
| | 11
|
| Burn hand on hot plate because it didn't look hot!
| | 10
|
| Made up NMR in TLC solvent (conveniently kept in old CDCl0 bottle)
| | 9
|
| Dump HCL down the drain and cost $$$
| | 9
|
| Used short range pH paper when the long range pH paper was suppose to be used when acidifying solution.
| | 9
|
| Used too much toluene in a reaction and spent DAYS pumping it off
| | 9
|
| Mix the fractions after a distillation and put in the waste the product
| | 8
|
| believed that combinatorial chemistry and would revolutionize drug discovery
| | 8
|
| Turned oil bath up to max power. Left for the night. Advisor discovered the combusting oil bath early the next morning and calls you at home.
| | 8
|
| 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.
| | 8
|
| Didn't check BH3 purity, or any other extremely moisture sensitive material, and recovered starting material.
| | 8
|
| Attached vacuum line to the distillation flask without properly securing the thermometer (breaking thermometer and flask thus).
| | 7
|
| Dump dry ice/acetone bath into sink, wait for maintenance to patch resulting crack.
| | 7
|
| Poured Stir-bar into Sep. Funnel, decided to shake it anyway and shattered the funnel
| | 7
|
| Good site!
| | 7
|
| Connected the Pipelines for the pump in the reverse direction during distillation, causes mercury thermometer to shoot out
| | 6
|
| Used oxygen instead of argon for an inert atmosphere
| | 6
|
| Brought in own air supply in an old bottle of tBuLi and started a fire in a drybox.
| | 6
|
| Didn't check for cracks on clips for rotavap. Flask drops in bath.
| | 6
|
| Dropped dry ice into a LiAlH4 reaction to "cool it down."
| | 6
|
| Turned up HCL(g) tank too much, hose bursts and recieved an acid spray to the face.
| | 6
|
| Drop a too small stopper into a column. Try to fish it out with a big pair of tweezers, drop it again and brake the column.
| | 5
|
| 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.
| | 5
|
| Play with the NMR magnetic field with a spatula while taking a scan.
| | 5
|
| Poured reaction into sep funnel with stopcock open..then trying to sop up reaction from benchtop with paper towels.
| | 5
|
| Mix two different samples in the same NMR tube ...
| | 4
|
| While washing glassware, combined saturated KOH/EtOH waste with concentrated HNO3 waste.
| | 4
|
| Dropped depth gauge down NMR spectrometer.
| | 4
|
| Accidentally mixed Sulphuric and Nitric acid with methanol whilst trying to "clean" a flask
| | 4
|
| Did not measure melting point of any organic compounds for an entire year. Measured melting point of all organic compounds synthesised within one year the night before thesis was due.
| | 4
|
| During a vacuum distillation of aniline, attached vacuum line directly to three-necked round bottom, thus bypassing the condenser. Suprised to see aniline condensing in the manifold.
| | 3
|
| Followed procedure as instructed by evil prof; should have seen the fountain of vile chromium-laced goo coming!
| | 3
|
| Didn't read the part of the instructions that said add concentrated sulfuric acid dropwise (read: SLOWLY). Had to leave lab for a few minutes while the acid cloud dispersed.
| | 3
|
| Degassed the teaction with methane instead of nitrogen
| | 3
|
| Mixed up the fridge and freezer, discovering product slush on your sealed broken flask the next day.
| | 3
|
| Spilled solvent into a drinking bottle on the benchtop then drank it
| | 3
|
| While performing the reflux reactions,Forgot to switch on the Water circulator.
| | 3
|
| Accidentally used adapter instead of stopper in sep funnel....
| | 2
|
| Had the water bottle and mobile-phase bottle next to eachother on the bench while running a column. Guess which bottle I used when I next had to replenish the mobile phase.
| | 2
|
| fghf%40gfgf.com
| | 2
|
| m544k
| | 2
|
| Added all five chemicals to create a reagent, forgot to add 400mL of water, then wondered how one could obtain four 40mL Spec 20 trials from 40.5mL of solution.
| | 2
|
| Wearing a Miami Dolphins or New England Patriots jersey on Football Sunday up here in sunny Upstate New York. Bonus demerits for wearing a Dallas Cowboys 1993 or 1994 Super Bowl Champions cap.
| | 2
|
| Degassed freshly distilled solvent with no outlet; septum flew off with satisfying 'pop.'
| | 2
|
| Blamed terrible gas on Swern reaction, which no one was performing at the time
| | 2
|
| Try to obtain a better vacuum by placing more cotton wool in the liquid nitrogen trap.
| | 2
|
| melted a round bottom flask while drying (under vacuum) celite for the glove box... twice.
| | 2
|
| finished unloading and realized you didnt wear any rubber, and now you are stuck with child support.
| | 2
|
| I'm a newly wed and we together with my spouse decided to start building good credit as we started a family of our own, as in future we'll have buy a house and cars and many other things. I wanted a credit card for both of us, so that we could use it together and accumulate credit rating. Happily, I found a card for spouses at
| | 1
|
| During extraction, accidentally added soap solution instead of distilled water; two layers mysteriously hard to separate.
| | 1
|
| While 'maintaining' 2000 dollar high vacuum pump, pour oil into outlet. Express surprise that pump can hold so much oil. Supervisor not impressed :(.
| | 1
|
| Had to sneeze whilst handling sodium - covered my mouth - gloves on fire!!
| | 1
|
| Didn't believe post-doc when he said "KH is much more reactive than NaH"...sink fire
| | 1
|
| A chain was attached to a hood to secure a glass cylinder and you accdidently dissolved it
| | 1
|
| Added larger volume of gas to volatile reagent container than volume of solvent I was removing...too much positive pressure loss of volatile solvent on bench...no fire , luckily
| | 1
|
| Checking drybox gloves for leaks using vacuum, no leaks found but imploded faceplate of drybox
| | 1
|
| hmcvb It site good, but it seems themes are similar !! mjocgj
| | 1
|
| c316t
| | 1
|
| gizxx It site good, but it seems themes are similar !! O my very good xtszdj
| | 1
|
| gbezhwmva pfnqvji hwvzrpf nlvhxeidk kqefmpys fbzqud tefizmnuc
| | 1
|
| %3Ca href%3D %3E%3C/a%3E %0A
| | 1
|
| Sliced Glovebox gloves because you were still wearing rings
| | 1
|
| finished unloading and realized you didnt wear any rubber, and now you are stuck with child support.
| | 1
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