Somebody used permanent ink on the whiteboard

Oct 17, 2023 Last reply: 2 years ago 40 Replies

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Diethyl Ether is the more interesting one. I think that's the one we were warned about in the lab. The vapors will "flow along the bench top", and you can't have any Bunsen burners at all running in the lab. Only electric heating mantles. I imagine a large number of other ignition sources would set it off. I was never impressed by the Chem Department notion of H&S.

In addition, there are interesting storage requirements. It does not like light, which is why it is stored in brown glass bottles (it forms explosive peroxides if exposed to light). Some comedian in the building, got some brown glass beer bottles and a beer bottle cap machine, and put diethyl ether in the bottles. The bottles had no labels on them. Next, they installed a refrigerator on one of the stairwell landings (might have been second or third floor). The refrigerator (the kind you might use at home), had a big chain around the middle of it, and a lock was installed. So if you got into that (unmarked) refrigerator, you would see (unmarked) beer bottles, but what is in there, isn't fit to drink :-)

The stairwells in this case, were quite wide, and everything in that column was steel. Nothing in the stairwell to burn (except some idiots refrigerator). Two stairwells, so if one was on fire (say, some refrigerator :-) ), you would run down the other stairwell. And you only have to run faster than the other people.

That stuff is not on my "toy list". any more than I would keep lead azide at home (one of my fellow students, blew the door off a fume hood with that stuff -- the gentleman in question, was a "real chemist", unlike myself).

Paul

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