• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzyouth risky
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    5 months ago

    Yes we know salt and water arent dangerous. We ask that you wear labcoats etc. in the lab despite not working with anything dangerous so that you form a habit of using protective lab garb regardless. Because a lot of accidents in the lab cause harm because someone thought it was safe to lower their gaurd and it wasn’t.

    Case in point: one of my undergrad professors during his time at grad school walked around in the lab without his safety goggles on. He felt comfortable doing that because he wasn’t himself working on anything particularly dangerous at the time. He was just walking from one end of the lab to the other. Well it turns out that someone else was. There was a fairly good sized glass bottle with fuming nitric acid and other stuff for a reaction in it that was boiling away in the fume hood. No I dont know why the sash was as high as it was. There was a funnel sitting in the neck. Occasionally the jug would “bump” in other words, some liquid would spurt up top due to a slight build up in pressure caused by intermittant boiling. And one time while he was walking by, it burped a lot more violently than it normally would and some of it sprayed into his eyes while he was walking by. He spent the next two weeks in a dark room occasionally dropping antibiotic eye drops into his eyes so his corneas would heal. Apparently it was fairly painful and every blink felt like he rubbed sandpaper over his eyes. If it had been a strongly basic solution, it would have eaten his corneas and potentially blinded him permanently. Point is, we are trying to stop you guys from becoming too casual in the lab so you dont have your corneas half eaten by nitric acid because you felt safer than you actually were.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzparty poopers
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    5 months ago

    This was at a community college in the US. Instructors are supposed to be supervising them with lab coordinators supporting them. The lab that had the gas incident was downstairs and the student was left unattended or otherwise gained access to the lab after class. Hence the instructor’s supervisor had a chat with them about not doing that. The biology lab coordinator responsible for those labs found the gas was on and had to shut off the gas.

    As for the broken glass, theyd break something then throw it in the dirty glassware bin hoping no one would find out. Which is sad because students shouldnt be afraid of it being found out that they broke glassware on accident. Almost everyone breaks glassware on accident eventually. I just want that broken glassware to be dealt with correctly so I dont find out what they did when dealing with the dirty glassware after class.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzparty poopers
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    5 months ago

    Tbh these numbers dont surprise me much given my experiences as a lab coordinator. The highschool students were far far more prone to mistakes and accidents than the college students were and those were the gifted students. Theyd do stuff like leave broken glassware and glass shards in the dirty glassware bins for me to find. One tried to cause an explosion by turning the gas on for all the bunsen burners and walking out. (Instructor reprimanded for leaving them in the lab unattended, student was expelled) The point is I am not surprised by these numbers at all.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzepidemiology
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    5 months ago

    People say this but the reality is that you are already traveling through time and you aren’t teleporting into the space where the Earth used to be. Just as traveling backward would essentially just reverse that process. i.e unless you specifically design a time travel device to kill you that way, thats not how time travel works.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCan I lick it?
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    5 months ago

    Lithium salts are used to treat bipolar. The metal isnt just reacting with the water on your tongue to create a very strong base (and lots of heat), you are also going to be ingesting that Lithium (as a lithium soap as it reacts with oils and fats) which can have different (unpleasant) effects on you depending on how much was ingested. If your kidney function is impaired, it gets worse.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCan I lick it?
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    5 months ago

    Lithium, Sodium etc. need to be upped to “please reconsider.” Calcium and all the lanthanides are also metals I would not advise licking because theyre very reactive. Promethium is especially dangerous due to its radioactivity with its longest lived isotope having a half life of around 17 years. So not only is it reactive, youd die to the radiation too.


  • xkforce@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzfossil fuels
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    5 months ago

    Saying that our only options are to produce stuff or not produce CO2 at a gargantuan scale is a false dichotomy. CO2 production at the scale that it is now is the result of the production processes that result in that CO2 being cheaper than the ones that on the whole, do not. We are flushing this planet down the drain not because we cant do otherwise but because its cheaper right now to do what were doing instead.