/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2013-02-11T13:15:57-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/11/how_not_to_do_it_chromium_trioxide.php Note: this was a post on my old blog site, and never made the migration over to the current "In the Pipeline". I was reminded of it this morning, and thought I'd bring it more out into the light. There... 76206@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2013-02-11T13:15:57-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/10/26/accident_report_or_one_damn_thing_after_another.php I have this from a lab-accidents-I-have-known discussion over on Reddit. It is, of course, unverified, but it's depressingly plausible. As a chemist, this one is guaranteed to make you bury your head in your hands - it's the second law... 75966@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2012-10-26T10:22:09-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/02/21/ten_tons_of_sodium_and_just_one_lake.php Via on Twitter (and that via C&E News), I bring you the definitive what-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-this-sodium video. The end of World War II brought all kinds of material disposal problems - you may have seen footage of virtually new airplanes being dumped... 75465@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2012-02-21T08:15:26-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/02/21/ten_tons_of_sodium_and_just_one_lake.php Via Sally Church on Twitter (and a post by Bethany Halford at C&E News), I bring you the definitive what-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-this-sodium video. The end of World War II brought all kinds of material disposal problems - you may have seen footage... 75466@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2012-02-21T08:15:26-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/02/16/when_reagents_attack.php Well, since I was just talking about a reagent that can potentially take off without warning, I wanted to solicit vivid experiences from the crowd. What's a compound that you've made that did something violently unexpected? I can recall making... 75461@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Life in the Drug Labs 2012-02-16T11:06:22-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/06/storage_of_industrial_chemicals_gone_rather_wrong.php What do you have when a fire starts at a large chemical packing company, handling all sorts of oils, paints, coatings, and various industrial chemicals? Where they have hundreds of thousand-liter containers stored, surrounded by all the crates and packing... 74814@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2011-01-06T07:50:46-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/06/30/how_not_to_do_it_hydrogen_gas_mixtures.php Culturing bacteria is usually a pretty quiet affair. Bacteria aren't too noisy, and the equipment used to keep them happy isn't too dangerous. But there are exceptions. If you're going to culture anaerobes, you need somewhat more advanced technique, what... 74558@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2010-06-30T06:18:33-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/05/27/max_gergels_memoirs.php For once, I'm going to farm out a "Things I Won't Work With" post to someone else. For those who missed it in the comments, here's the link to the PDF of Max Gergel's extraordinary memoir "Excuse Me Sir, Would... 74496@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Chemical News 2010-05-27T06:34:12-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/05/14/how_not_to_do_it_acetylene_cylinders.php For Friday lunchtime, I have a brief but alarming video clip from a 2007 incident in Dallas, where a fire started at a company supplying industrial gases to welding shops and the like. The incident was heralded, like so many... 74471@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2010-05-14T11:22:54-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/04/30/phthalate_a_natural_product_sure_bout_that.php In case anyone missed it, a commenter on this post unearthed a really extraordinary find in the chemical literature. Here's an obscure isolation paper, from an obscure Chinese journal, reporting on a profoundly boring list of marine natural products. What's... 74440@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2010-04-30T11:44:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/03/10/how_not_to_do_it_liquid_oxygen_cylinders.php We haven't had a How Not to Do It around here in a while, so here's a companion piece to the famous Sealed-Up Liquid Nitrogen Tank. This incident happened (as far as I can tell) about ten years ago. It's... 74327@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2010-03-10T08:40:33-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/03/04/mental_health_break_the_alkali_metals_show_their_personalities.php Some blogs run pictures of cats to give the readers a break from the ordinary. Around here, I thought that this might be appropriate. Here are the alkali metals, from top to bottom, differentiated in the most basic way possible.... 74312@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2010-03-04T12:17:10-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/12/15/manfred_christl_rides_again_bonus_idiotic_lab_accident_too.php Readers may remember the incident a couple of years ago where a paper was published claiming the synthesis of some very odd-looking 12-membered ring compounds. Prof. Manfred Christl of the University of Würzburg noticed something odd about this reaction, though,... 74185@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2009-12-15T08:32:54-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/05/how_not_to_do_it_the_secret_patent_decoder_ring.php Patent applications are no fun to write. You have to figure out just what you're trying to cover (and how wide a space around it you want to try to clear), and the lawyers have to whip up language that... 74000@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2009-08-05T06:41:26-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/25/how_not_to_do_it_water_aspirators.php You need access to vacuum if you’re going to work at the bench in chemistry. In fact, you need more than one kind. Reasonably hard vacuum (well, by our standards, which is laughable by the standards of the physicists) is... 73513@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2008-08-25T07:19:55-05:00