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Molecular Manipulations
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I don't wear gloves for common acids usually. I've had a couple burns, both nitric acid; sulfuric and hydrochloric I've spilled on my skin, but
washing within ~30 seconds is enough to stop a burn.
-The manipulator
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know. -W. H. Auden
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Endo
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Same here, I should wear gloves more, I just don't very often unless it is dangerous or has bitten me in the past. One memorable one was the Karl
Fischer titrant under the wedding band. I think the chloroform was just enough to carry the free iodine into the tender skin under my ring.
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The Volatile Chemist
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I once was wearing tennis shoes with short socks in the lab, and let some sodium bisulfate fall into it. Ouch. I didn't notice it till later, because
I can't feel much at my ankles, and there's still a little raised, different colored skin there... Lesson: No short socks, don't spill things into
them.
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Mesa
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Going through 5+ pairs of gloves after spending less than an hour in the lab. I get this unreasonable paranoia about scenarios where residue on the
gloves will screw something up/result in something bad happening.
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Wolfgangg
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Letting the glassware pile up is a big one. The other day I was carrying out a procedure and found I was in immediate need of a beaker, just to find
that they were all used up. I had to frantically find and clean one.
Not always wearing gloves WAS one of mine. Until I spilled some H2O2 on my finger and it burned my cuticle off around my finger nail.
Probably my worst is using a cheap $25 rotary vane pump in completely inappropriate situations. Vacuuming off low boiling solvents, vacuum filtering,
all without a trap. I was given it for free and figured I'd just run it into the ground since my aspirator (which I used to use for such things) was
inoperable. The oil frequently changes between different colors, foggy to clear, dark to light, ect as the oil picks up whatever moisture/solvent then
gets evaporated off after being ran for awhile. I figured if I got even a few uses out of the pump I'd be happy. I've been using it in these
situations for 2 years now, have only changed the oil twice, and it still seems to pull down to ~1 mm Hg. I save all the TLC for my good pump.
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Zombie
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I have no bad habits so to speak because I don't have a lab set up yet.
BUT, I will be sure to avoid all the "habits" expressed here.
This thread has been more helpful than most of you may think. 
They tried to have me "put to sleep" so I came back to return the favor.
Zom.
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karlos³
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I once pressed an alcoholic-wet filter paper full of lachrymatoric nitroalkene dry without gloves, washed my hands, but only with water, and many
hours later I sat at work, resting my head in my hands, when i felt an unpleasant warming sensation, which gradually became more unpleasant...
I realised, i had probably some traces of the nitroalkene on my hands, when a co-worker said, "man, you have some very red cheeks, is anything
wrong?".
I got home shortly after this, and washed my face with an alcohol-wet towel, not very surprising the burning sensation stopped directly after this...
Also the habit of not using gloves if "its done in a minute, no need for gloves" stopped directly after this  .
Oh, and another bad habit i´ve stopped in the meantime, was measuring concentrated sulfuric acid without my lab coat on, after like five shirts that
came full of holes, literally penetrated, out of the washing machine, ive stopped this bad habit as well.
There also was one involving not wearing safety goggles, but thats too stupid to tell. I´ve stopped this bad habit as well after being left with only
60% due to corneal distortion after caustic materials spilled into one of my eyes.
If it wasnt treated for two days, every half hour, with diluted ascorbic acid solution in the hospital, i could have have been much worse, the
treatment helped a lot, because it was an alkali burn.
(well, due to this accident i am now always wearing glasses, so, when i use safety goggles i am now figuratively six-eyed )
Piling up of used Beakers and flasks is one of the bad habits i still do, i usually use at least as much as an half litre of acetone every time i am
cleaning the pile up .
[Edited on 18-4-2015 by karlos³]
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aga
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I use a couple of buckets to toss the used glassware into, and get around to cleaning it all when it's full.
Cleanup today was tedious in the extreme, as i tossed a beaker into the bucket with a few g of KMnO4 still in it and left the bucket for 4 days.
All of the other glassware had brown stains all over it, which took a lot of elbow grease to remove.
Gloves are cheap here, so i tend to wear them when doing any dirty work.
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Loptr
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Quote: Originally posted by aga  | I use a couple of buckets to toss the used glassware into, and get around to cleaning it all when it's full.
Cleanup today was tedious in the extreme, as i tossed a beaker into the bucket with a few g of KMnO4 still in it and left the bucket for 4 days.
All of the other glassware had brown stains all over it, which took a lot of elbow grease to remove.
Gloves are cheap here, so i tend to wear them when doing any dirty work. |
Those stains should come right off with a little dilute HCL. 
So far I really haven't had to scrub anything, and have just used base/acid baths, a little detergent here and there, but no real scrubbing to be had.
Yet.... and of course, I haven't really had any tarry reactions up to this point.
[Edited on 18-4-2015 by Loptr]
[Edited on 18-4-2015 by Loptr]
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karlos³
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Oh i forgot one important lesson i´ve learned in the lab!
Never throw a boiling stone in a boiling solution! That one time, also a lachrimatory compound, was refluxed in alcoholic solution with a 50cm liebig
condenser on top, the flask was half full, but, after i throwed a couple of boiling stones into the mixture, it climbed the whole way out of the
condenser, dripped on the stirplate and for three hours i wasnt able to enter the lab without tears in my eyes! Safety goggles, wtf, only a respirator
would have done good for me!
That was a nasty and important lesson...
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The Volatile Chemist
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LOL, that's hilarious! Sad, of course, but funny. I broke a boiling 50mL beaker full of FeSO4 solution on a flask because I tried to remove
it by picking it up with a test tube grabber on the lip.... yeah, don't do that either...
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learningChem
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I've smashed a few test tubes when shaking them to get rid of the water (after cleaning them). But I finally came up with a technique. The trick is to
hold them with both hands, one hand at each end.
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MannyE
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I'm new at this but when we were kids we had a HUGE jar of mercury (no idea where it came from) we used to play with. Like put a teaspoon of the
stuff in our hands and roll it around in our palms.. because it looked cool.
Here's the thing however. Even though I know better now it would take a LOT of willpower no to do it again if someone left me alone in a room with a
large quart jar of mercury.
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Zombie
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As kids we found a huge pool of mercury in the bottom of a construction site ditch in Yonkers NY. Maybe 1966ish...
I agree with you Manny... It would take an act of congress, and ten armed agents to stop me from playing with it again...
Just for further "grossness". We used to swim in the channel that led out of the Con Edison power station that led to the Bronx river, and eventually
the Hudson. You didn't have to worry about mosquitoes because there was some sort of oil/jelly that coated your whole body.
Ahhh the good old days.
They tried to have me "put to sleep" so I came back to return the favor.
Zom.
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Praxichys
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Laziness. I tend to use valuable reagents to clean gunk out of glass rather than a little elbow grease. I go through H2O2,
permanganate, H2SO4, HCl, NaOH, and iPrOH and MeOH like crazy. It's so nice when it is getting late and the prep is finished and all that needs to
happen is to remove some gnarly tar from a flask... chuck in the appropriate digesting agent and set it to stir overnight with a little warmth,
everything rinses clean in the morning. I forgot about one once, discovering it more than 48h of heating later, boiled dry with worn-out stir bar and
a ring scored into the glass where the stir bar spun, apparently abraded by residue formed by NaOH and flask gunk. Oops.
Fire! I go through lots of acetone drying glassware. I usually put glass straight into the cabinet after washing and let it air dry.
If it is wet when I need it, I spray it down with acetone from a wash bottle and blast it with a heat gun. I have a bad habit of swirling acetone in a
flask and then dumping it straight onto the concrete floor or bench to evaporate. The lab always has a lot of air movement with the hood on, so there
really is no danger of explosion, and for fun sometimes I ignite the bench/floor with a torch when I'm done and flare it off. This is probably a bad
habit.
Shopping. I also have the problem of buying glassware and reagents that I have no immediate need for. It is mostly justified like
"When will I see XXXX at this price on eBay, when I eventually need it?" Some of these things have proven very useful in certain situations but for
the most part are unnecessary. I have yet to use my trichloroethylene, HPLC-grade benzene, ethanolamine, naphthalene, stearic acid, and others, and
they were purely opportunity purchases without planned use.
This might not be a bad habit but I tend to stock up on things that I think will be removed from OTC shelves soon. Consequently I have "reserves" of
multiple gallons of toluene, MEK, and sulfuric acid.
Keeping Stock. I have an online sheet of my current chemical stock (in my signature!). I should really update it as I experiment, but
I continually find myself poring through a month worth of lab notes to update my inventory sheet. Impatience causes me to add stuff to the sheet
immediately after purchase, before it has even arrived.
Just doing it. I have a YouTube channel with hungry subscribers, and a lab I have spent something like $10,000 on in the last 10
years. One would think I would be eager to get to work down there, but sometimes it is hard to find motivation after appeasing the maintenance needs
of my home, job, girlfriend, vehicle, etc. It comes in bursts - I get really excited about something, spend a week of nights until 2am down there,
make a video, and then the lab collects dust for a couple of weeks until I can scrape together the motivation. I currently have a 120g acetamide prep
half-done that has been sitting for 12 days now, video half-filmed, sabotaged by a 5-day visit from the girlfriend (who lives 300 miles away).
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The Volatile Chemist
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Ideas come in bursts for me, too. I've bought a good bit of reagents that I didn't have use for earlier, but have now used all of them, and have been
glad I bought all of them... except boric acid. Why did I buy it? I don't know... I've yet to do anything successful with it...
Edit: Oh, if you have a reagent you aren't using, give it to someone! I'd experiment the hell out of whatever someone gave me out of pure gratitude
and joy
[Edited on 4-20-2015 by The Volatile Chemist]
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Texium
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Boric acid will turn flames green, similar to barium ions but a bit less yellowish. Not super amazing, but it's something. I've used it a couple times
as a catalyst, and have dehydrated some to make boric oxide that I had planned on thermiting with Mg powder to isolate boron. Never got around to it
though. The boric oxide is still sitting on my shelf. Yeah, boric acid really doesn't have a ton of uses. Very minor things for the most part.
TVC, do you have any reagents that you don't use that you'd be willing to give away?
(other than boric acid...)
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j_sum1
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Boric acid?
Well heating it makes an interesting glassy compound when the water is given off -- B2O3. An Al can may be used as a disposable beaker quite
effectively. Just don't let it heat to the melting point of aluminium as I did. there is a bit of a mess.
I have done the boron reduction by thermite with Mg. (wear glasses when you grind the glassy B2O3 in your mortar and pestle.) It works well and I
have a couple of nice ampoules of amorphous boron in the element collection. A future project is to try to obtain crystalline boron.
If you are just playing with thermites, then you can use Al powder. It is not really possible to extract the boron this way since Al2O3 cannot be
digested with an acid in the same manner as MgO. But if you just want a nice hot flare in the back yard, then why not.
Boric acid dissolved in methanol does give a lovely flame. Ethanol is not quite so effective.
And of course, boric acid is a useful beginning point for other boron chemistry. I know few details but I am led to believe that it is a lot more
interesting than it is often made out to be (puns on the name and whatever.) You might find an intriguing borate that you want to synthesise.
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Tdep
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Just a side point on boron chemistry, thermite between boron trioxide and aluminium doesn't really work. You need to heat boost it, even more than
with TiO2, to get any sort of reaction i've found. I have kilos of boric acid and was trying to make some borane via aluminium boride. If anyone
happens to know a way to make borane from boric acid (realistically, doesn't have to be easy but no fluorine or anything) that would be nice.
Oh and in terms of the thread, another bad habit is that I often light small fires on the concrete floor of my lab, to either test or destroy things.
It makes sense to me, it's all contained but no way i'd get away with that in a professional lab.
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j_sum1
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| Quote: Originally posted by Tdep |
Oh and in terms of the thread, another bad habit is that I often light small fires on the concrete floor of my lab, to either test or destroy things.
It makes sense to me, it's all contained but no way i'd get away with that in a professional lab. |
Ha! I do that too. In my defence, my lab doesn't even have a level floor. It is a multi-purpose shed converted from a chicken coop that was built
more than 60 years ago. They simply poured concrete directly on the dirt without even levelling it first. It is a pretty rough sort of a setting and
only one step up from working outside.
Teflon tape and Al powder is a bit of a favourite and I have been experimenting with adding strontium compounds to get a coloured flame. It makes
sense to do it on concrete and the floor below me is better than the concrete patch beside the house on the other side of the yard.
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Deathunter88
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| Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1 | | Quote: Originally posted by Tdep |
Oh and in terms of the thread, another bad habit is that I often light small fires on the concrete floor of my lab, to either test or destroy things.
It makes sense to me, it's all contained but no way i'd get away with that in a professional lab. |
Ha! I do that too. In my defence, my lab doesn't even have a level floor. It is a multi-purpose shed converted from a chicken coop that was built
more than 60 years ago. They simply poured concrete directly on the dirt without even levelling it first. It is a pretty rough sort of a setting and
only one step up from working outside.
Teflon tape and Al powder is a bit of a favourite and I have been experimenting with adding strontium compounds to get a coloured flame. It makes
sense to do it on concrete and the floor below me is better than the concrete patch beside the house on the other side of the yard.
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Don't breath in any fumes from the Teflon burning, it may kill you 
But hey, its fun so continue doing it.
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The Volatile Chemist
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| Quote: Originally posted by zts16 | Boric acid will turn flames green, similar to barium ions but a bit less yellowish. Not super amazing, but it's something. I've used it a couple times
as a catalyst, and have dehydrated some to make boric oxide that I had planned on thermiting with Mg powder to isolate boron. Never got around to it
though. The boric oxide is still sitting on my shelf. Yeah, boric acid really doesn't have a ton of uses. Very minor things for the most part.
TVC, do you have any reagents that you don't use that you'd be willing to give away?
(other than boric acid...) |
Hey, be nice. I have like 20 chemicals of quantities over 10g. I have 10 more chemicals in quantities over 1g. I have ~10 chemicals in 10mL 0.1M
dropper bottles. That's it. I use everything frequently. I use the metal ions a lot, and all f the acids. I own two bases, ammonia solution and
bicarb. And I have to go out to buy some more. I can't afford to give away anything. I've managed to do something cool with everything...except boric
acid.
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SimpleChemist-238
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For me, all that is on this thread.
We are chemists , we bring light to the darkness. Knowledge to ignorant, excitement to the depressed and unknowing. we bring crops to broken fields
and water to the desert. Where there is fear we bring curiosity.
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dermolotov
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I'm probably going to be shamed to hell and back for this but... I smoke a cigar when I do refluxes/ distillations in the fume hood sometimes.
Especially if it's a 0.5-2h reflux or 500cc to distil, I just say "screw it" and light one up, while watching the thing bubble away.
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j_sum1
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That means there are at least three of us who burn things on the floor.
(Indoor fire pits are trendy anyway. Everyone should have one.)
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