Tales from the Lab: All your base are belong to us!
Random ramblings from work:
So, I work in a lab. Interesting things often happen in labs, that's just how labs are. For instance, we came back from Thanksgiving break to a minor disaster. That Friday, Maintenance had cut the house nitrogen lines on site for some minor repairs. This should be fine, it's not like anyone was there to be using the nitrogen lines, afterall, right? Except, one of the water/ethylene glycol tanks that heats our building is kept under nitrogen pressure. Well, actually, they're all kept under nitrogen pressure. But this one didn't have a check valve. So when it lost pressure, its contents backed up into the nitrogen lines that were meant to pressurize it. Which is how one of our weekend workers, Kim, came in on Saturday to find the labs flooded six inches deep in a mixture of water and antifreeze from every nitrogen tap that had been left onover the weekend. We spent Monday mopping and running tubing so we could run water,and then nitrogen through the lines to clean them out. It sucked. Numerous things were contaminated. And the IR had ambitions to be an aquarium. You see, it has a nitrogen purge to help protect it from caustic samples. When it was given a water/antifreeze purge instead, it flooded, and was dead beyond our ability to ressurect. Those of you on the Lib, yes, this is where T'Selara's little incident with the water tank came from. What, you thought I made that up?
Of course, most of our adventures aren't nearly so dramatic. One of the funniest lab moments ever occurred durring pass-off, when the shift coming on and the shift coming off meet to discuss samples that need to be handed off and general lab information. Tracy needed to etch an ID number on a glass syringe, and thus was looking for the diamond point pen. So she wrote a note on the white board 'Does anyone know where the diamond point pen is?' Unfortunately, she was writing at a weird angle, and didn't put enough space between 'pen' and 'is' - we were all laughing like loons.
Now to the ramblings of this week...
So on Tuesday I had a tracker (paperwork for a chemical in the lab for testing) that wanted an FACD, which stands for free acid. You titrate it, and then calculate the % acid. No big deal. Of course, to titrate an acid, you need a base. Most FACD/TACD (just a calculation difference, same procedure) titrations use 0.01 normal sodium hydroxide in water, or NaOH in GeekSpeak, as the base. This chemical, however, likes 0.01 normal potassium hydroxide in methanol, or KOH in MeOH. The TACD buret we keep pre-filled contains 0.01nNaOH. So, I went digging around in the reagent cabinets for some alcoholic KOH - I knew I'd seen some. But every lab is infested by lab gremlins - little invisible evil-doers who like to cause trouble for chemists. Breking glassware, spilling chemicals, jinxing computers and the like. I am certain they were behind the glycol incident described above. But this week they decided all your base are belong to us. I found numerous normalities of NaOH. I even found several bottles of 0.5n alcoholic KOH. But 0.5n was useless to me. I needed either 0.01n or a 0.1n volumetric standard so I could make my own 0.01n. Now, as it happens, the company I work for makes and sells a 0.1n volumetric standard KOH in MeOH. But our lab doesn't stock it, because we don't use it much. So I ended up getting some KOH pellets, making a volumetric standard, standardizing it, and using that to make my 0.01n titrant. Now, the reason I blame the lab gremlins for this is because last night, I was looking for something completely different, and in a cabinet I and several other people had checked multiple times...I found a liter of 0.01n KOH in MeOH. Darn gremlins...
Now last night, we were running low on solvent trackers, so aside from a few titrations, I was looking at a lovely evening of lab chores. Normally I work in the devo lab, but I needed the auto-titrators, so I was with a couple of coworkers in micro. And somebody set up us the bomb. A lab minion from one of the production departments comes over to QC, asking who's in charge. This usually means that someone has a 24 urgent (oh dear, our underwear seems to be in a knot) tracker for us. Now, any dork can send us a 5 day normal (run this, please) tracker or a 3 day high (get a move on, if you don't mind) tracker. But there are RULES about urgents. As in, you must give us four hours notice that you're bringing over an urgent, or we will hate you. When Bob checked his email, he found that we'd been given 10 minutes notice. Oops. Now in this case, the only reason they wanted it run as an urgent is because Harry, the weekend dude this weekend, won't be able to clear the data. Thing is, the clearing chemist (data reviewer) on our shift worked a split shift yesterday, so she was already gone. It wasn't gonna clear til Monday anyway. This led to swearing and grousing from Bob and Tami. Understandably. I finished my titrations and spent the rest of my evening cleaning out the solvents cabinet and exterminating the Killer Dustbunnies of Doom.
In non-lab news, life continues a pace. I've done some real cooking. Go me. Though I'm kinda craving taco bell tonight... The cat is being his usual adorable self. And I need to do laundry. Business as usual.
This post brought to you by the lab gremlins, bad 80s video games, and the letter Y.
So, I work in a lab. Interesting things often happen in labs, that's just how labs are. For instance, we came back from Thanksgiving break to a minor disaster. That Friday, Maintenance had cut the house nitrogen lines on site for some minor repairs. This should be fine, it's not like anyone was there to be using the nitrogen lines, afterall, right? Except, one of the water/ethylene glycol tanks that heats our building is kept under nitrogen pressure. Well, actually, they're all kept under nitrogen pressure. But this one didn't have a check valve. So when it lost pressure, its contents backed up into the nitrogen lines that were meant to pressurize it. Which is how one of our weekend workers, Kim, came in on Saturday to find the labs flooded six inches deep in a mixture of water and antifreeze from every nitrogen tap that had been left onover the weekend. We spent Monday mopping and running tubing so we could run water,and then nitrogen through the lines to clean them out. It sucked. Numerous things were contaminated. And the IR had ambitions to be an aquarium. You see, it has a nitrogen purge to help protect it from caustic samples. When it was given a water/antifreeze purge instead, it flooded, and was dead beyond our ability to ressurect. Those of you on the Lib, yes, this is where T'Selara's little incident with the water tank came from. What, you thought I made that up?
Of course, most of our adventures aren't nearly so dramatic. One of the funniest lab moments ever occurred durring pass-off, when the shift coming on and the shift coming off meet to discuss samples that need to be handed off and general lab information. Tracy needed to etch an ID number on a glass syringe, and thus was looking for the diamond point pen. So she wrote a note on the white board 'Does anyone know where the diamond point pen is?' Unfortunately, she was writing at a weird angle, and didn't put enough space between 'pen' and 'is' - we were all laughing like loons.
Now to the ramblings of this week...
So on Tuesday I had a tracker (paperwork for a chemical in the lab for testing) that wanted an FACD, which stands for free acid. You titrate it, and then calculate the % acid. No big deal. Of course, to titrate an acid, you need a base. Most FACD/TACD (just a calculation difference, same procedure) titrations use 0.01 normal sodium hydroxide in water, or NaOH in GeekSpeak, as the base. This chemical, however, likes 0.01 normal potassium hydroxide in methanol, or KOH in MeOH. The TACD buret we keep pre-filled contains 0.01nNaOH. So, I went digging around in the reagent cabinets for some alcoholic KOH - I knew I'd seen some. But every lab is infested by lab gremlins - little invisible evil-doers who like to cause trouble for chemists. Breking glassware, spilling chemicals, jinxing computers and the like. I am certain they were behind the glycol incident described above. But this week they decided all your base are belong to us. I found numerous normalities of NaOH. I even found several bottles of 0.5n alcoholic KOH. But 0.5n was useless to me. I needed either 0.01n or a 0.1n volumetric standard so I could make my own 0.01n. Now, as it happens, the company I work for makes and sells a 0.1n volumetric standard KOH in MeOH. But our lab doesn't stock it, because we don't use it much. So I ended up getting some KOH pellets, making a volumetric standard, standardizing it, and using that to make my 0.01n titrant. Now, the reason I blame the lab gremlins for this is because last night, I was looking for something completely different, and in a cabinet I and several other people had checked multiple times...I found a liter of 0.01n KOH in MeOH. Darn gremlins...
Now last night, we were running low on solvent trackers, so aside from a few titrations, I was looking at a lovely evening of lab chores. Normally I work in the devo lab, but I needed the auto-titrators, so I was with a couple of coworkers in micro. And somebody set up us the bomb. A lab minion from one of the production departments comes over to QC, asking who's in charge. This usually means that someone has a 24 urgent (oh dear, our underwear seems to be in a knot) tracker for us. Now, any dork can send us a 5 day normal (run this, please) tracker or a 3 day high (get a move on, if you don't mind) tracker. But there are RULES about urgents. As in, you must give us four hours notice that you're bringing over an urgent, or we will hate you. When Bob checked his email, he found that we'd been given 10 minutes notice. Oops. Now in this case, the only reason they wanted it run as an urgent is because Harry, the weekend dude this weekend, won't be able to clear the data. Thing is, the clearing chemist (data reviewer) on our shift worked a split shift yesterday, so she was already gone. It wasn't gonna clear til Monday anyway. This led to swearing and grousing from Bob and Tami. Understandably. I finished my titrations and spent the rest of my evening cleaning out the solvents cabinet and exterminating the Killer Dustbunnies of Doom.
In non-lab news, life continues a pace. I've done some real cooking. Go me. Though I'm kinda craving taco bell tonight... The cat is being his usual adorable self. And I need to do laundry. Business as usual.
This post brought to you by the lab gremlins, bad 80s video games, and the letter Y.