My unusual collection

[T. Valko]

We had a student teacher who did that only with sodium which he mistook for phosphorus (he had poor eyesight). As the explosion loomed he yelled "Get Out". Nobody was hurt, fortunately.

I liked to disolve pennies in HNO3.

I used to work in a quality control lab where we tested materials (aggregates) for oxides using xray fluorescence and gravimetic analysis.

This is where I got most of my experience with Excel!

 

[chuckchuckit]

We had a student teacher who did that only with sodium which he mistook for phosphorus (he had poor eyesight). As the explosion loomed he yelled "Get Out". Nobody was hurt, fortunately.

Those school chemistry labs can be more dangerous than one might think.

BTW since you work with trace minerals in water, do you add them as a suppliment to bottled water products?

Every day with breakfast we take Trace Mineral Drops called "Liquimins" by company "Trace Minerals Research". We do that because we figure there really isn't many minerals left in the food sources like there used to be, due to the soils have been depleted of such, and minerals are not in typical water sources here. At least that is the thought for our taking trace minerals every day.

 

[diddi]

hooray for nitric acid! students used to make thermosetting polymers and the dumb-ar** teachers would just dump 25 conical flasks full of grunge on the poor lab tech and she would spend days trying to clean them. i was in her work area one time and saw this...

the solution: nitric acid and ethanol.

it just sits there doing nothing for 15 or so seconds and then reacts violently issuing forth volumenous quantities of NO2 (fume hood) and voilla! the flask is de-grunged and nasel passages impared for life. very impressive for the lab tech who had undoubtedly wasted months of her life cleaning glassware the hard way over the years.

 

[Atroxell]

Back in my younger days I worked in the photonics industry. it was a small company and there were a few of us that were proficient at various jobs in it. I did machine work, high-vaccuum pumping and various type of metal treatment in preparation for loading lamps.

As a result, I have been lucky enough to machine everything from steel and copper to titanium, molybdenum and tungsten. I was constantly trimming my eyebrows and moustache with burning clouds of hydrogen, but that's a different story for another time, perhaps. I also worked with most of the Noble gases and more mercury than I like to remember.

One day I was loading mercury into 200 watt lamps prior to pumping them out. Part of the process was to measure 12 landa (lambda? I am not sure--one was a very tiny amount of mercury) of mercury into a 1x3 mm glass tube, then gently blow it into a bubble just a short distance down the tube. I blew too hard, causing the mercury to jump across the bubble. When I released pressure, the mercury drop jumped right back across the bubble and down my throat.

I panicked. Jumped in my truck and drove to the Med Center to get my stomach pumped or whatever. The doctor asked how much I had swallowed and I told him. He told me not to worry, since I was working with triple distilled mercury. He claimed it was safe to drink up to a kilo of the stuff and that the salts of mercury were the bad stuff since it could be metabolized in one way or another. I made him put it in writing for my widow. He did. I'm still here.

 

[Firefly2012]

Back in my younger days ...

.... I made him put it in writing for my widow. He did. I'm still here.

That story is going to lose most of its impact if you tell us your younger days were in 2010!!



Did it taste of anything?

 

[Atroxell]

Hahaha! Sometimes I wish my younger days were in 2010. (Only sometimes, though.)

This happened back in the mid 1980s.

As for taste...well, there was a brief moment when I had a metallic, battery-like sensation whiz across my tongue toward the back of my mouth. It was gone as quick as I tasted it. That was what made me start loking for the mercury in the pod. And I never got a feeling of any kind of mass in my mouth.

All I could imagine when I swallowed it was some sort of neurological catastrophe was minutes away. It was a very panicky hour for me. And the only time in my life when I did not have to wait to see the doctor. Medical staff move quickly when you walk in and say, "I just swallowed some mercury. What needs to be done?"

And if my memory serves me correctly, a "landa" is 1/1,000,000 of a liter. So 12 of them would be a very small amount. Not that I feel there is a safe amount--I worked from that point on with a very careful respect for all of the materials I handled.

 

[Atroxell]

You know, I never really thought about how much a "landa" was until now. I just knew what amount I needed for each lamp. Depending on the application and rating our lamps would use anywhere from 3 to 75 landa.

Looking back I realize that a landa could not be millionth of a liter. That would be extremely tiny. Too small to see or work with.

When filling a 1 x 3 mm piece of tubing and having it all congregate in a single clump, 12 landa of mercury would be around 6-8 mm in length. the tubing would vary a bit in diameter, so it was never precise. But I sense that millionths would still be nearly invisible.

Anyone familiar with this measurement reference?

 

[Cindy Ellis]

One one-thousandth of a liter is a milliliter, and one-one-thousandth of that is a microliter (1 millionth of a liter). I used to regularly pipette between 4 and 10 microliters for assays. With volumes that size, the interior diameter of the pipette tip or capillary tube has a big impact on the height of the column of liquid. With a "typical" capillary tube (I no longer remember the i.d.), 10 microliters resulted in a column that was around 1 cm high, if I recall correctly. I haven't heard lambda used in reference to volume, though. When talking about wavelengths of light, a lambda is equal to a micron, which is 1 one-millionth of a meter. Maybe the term has also been used for volumes.

 

[diddi]

1 lamda = 1 microlitre

not sure of the origin. maybe like other non SI units like the angstrom that is perculiar to a particular industry or branch of scientific persuit?

organo-mercury compounds are particularly toxic. the mercury atoms displace the sodium and potassium atoms that support memory and neuron communication in the brain which causes 'short circuits' so to speak. typical early indications of exposure include tremors, and cognitive impairment. the felt hat industry in the early days used mercury compounds in the manufacture of the felt, hence the term "Mad as a Hatter"

i heard a bizzare anecdote that if you suspend a duck by its bill, you can pour mercury straight through and out the other end without causing any harm to the duck...
i cant say ive test the theorem

 

[chuckchuckit]

Wow, this is starting to sound like my rolling around mercury in the palms of my hands was not so bad, since others here were swallowing it. I guess one could call that a "heavy meal" - lol.

Guess I can't say the reason my hair is falling out now is due to my playing with mercury during my "younger days".

Hey BTW - here is a mercury riddle: Does anyone know how the term "Mad Hatter" came about? (No fair using Wikipedia, but it does help).