/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2008-04-30T07:22:13-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/30/how_not_to_do_it_diazomethane.php This post will have one of those stories that I can’t vouch for personally, and I’m very glad of that. It involves making diazomethane, which will have already gotten the attention of the chemists in the crowd. Diazomethane’s a very... 73264@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2008-04-30T07:22:13-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/29/how_not_to_do_it_column_chromatography.php I was mentioning chromatography last week, and I’ve been running several columns this week myself. I’m doing them the new-fangled-with-sufficient-funds way, which has been the standard in the drug industry for many years. You buy the columns of silica gel... 73131@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2008-02-29T08:39:43-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/10/31/how_not_to_do_it_hydrogen_bromide.php I’ve written before about all the fun you can have in a lab with compressed gas cylinders. We use the things all the time in chemistry, but as pieces of apparatus, they can only be pushed so far. The problem... 72823@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2007-10-31T07:27:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/03/08/how_not_to_do_it_more_diethyl_ether_now_with_extra_hardware.php Man, have things changed since I was in grad school. We used to pour all kinds of horrible things down the drain - mind you, this was a good twenty years ago. But you can't do that now, can you?... 72108@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2007-03-08T22:56:05-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/03/01/how_not_to_do_it_tertiary_butyllithium.php Over here at scenic Lowe Manor (otherwise known as the House that Pharma Has Paid And Will, With Any Luck, Continue Paying For), the dinner table conversation sometimes runs to things like the proper handling of flaming t-butyllithium. Well, OK,... 72087@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2007-03-01T23:03:21-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/02/01/how_not_to_do_it_ruining_stuff.php Here's a question for the readership that should generate some interesting answers: what's the most valuable item you've seen someone ruin in a lab? I'll leave it broad enough to include both equipment and materials, and I expect to cringe... 71964@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2007-02-01T21:23:36-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/01/16/how_not_to_do_it_sophomore_organic_edition.php I had a lot of long days when I was a teaching assistant. One semester I had three lab sections of sophomore organic chemistry to TA, and sometimes after the first lab of the week I knew that I was... 71828@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2007-01-16T22:05:03-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/04/06/how_not_to_do_it_distilling_hmpa.php Dylan Stiles has a post up on distilling HMPA, which will be familiar to anyone who's worked with the solvent. The problem is, HMPA doesn't come dry, and it has be be dry to be any good. You can take... 55035@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2006-04-06T20:27:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/03/08/how_not_to_do_it_liquid_nitrogen_tanks.php A colleague of mine forwarded a copy of an accident report from Texas A&M. It seems that in mid-January they had a bit of a blowout there, thanks to a big liquid nitrogen tank. Now, liquid nitrogen cylinders are normally... 52816@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2006-03-08T21:37:25-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/01/13/how_not_to_do_it_ether_peroxides.php We've had a few incidents recently at the Wonder Drug Factory where people have been using some common solvents like ether or tetrahydrofuran (THF) and ended up with odd results. When they check their reactions, there's something else in there... 46075@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2006-01-13T11:26:14-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/12/17/how_not_to_do_it_bromine.php I wasn't an eyewitness to this one, although I wish I had been. I pass it on secondhard from a former colleague of mine, on which it made an understandable impression. Bromine's an odd element. The two lighter halogens leading... 43330@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2005-12-17T21:10:00-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/06/26/how_not_to_do_it_vacuum_pumps.php I wandered into the lab one Saturday morning while I was in graduate school - (OK, scratch that, I wandered into the lab most Saturday mornings while I was in graduate school, which was one of the things I hated... 11242@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2005-06-26T22:02:23-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/06/12/how_not_to_do_it_distilling_benzene.php Summer students are showing up at academic and industrial labs around the country right about now. A certain percent of them will blow something up within the next three months, and that percent will be several standard deviations above the... 11231@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2005-06-12T22:28:59-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2005/04/28/speak_for_themselves_they_do.php I thought about writing a whole post welcoming back my fellow Arkansan, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, but decided that not many folks would sit still for that. It does strike me, though, that the bird was rediscovered not that far from... 11200@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2005-04-28T21:08:24-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2004/10/20/ping_ping_ping.php I was using hydrogen chloride gas straight out of the cylinder today, first time I've done that in many years. That's a very different substance from regular hydrochloric acid, which is technically a solution of HCl gas in water. The... 11063@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Life in the Drug Labs 2004-10-20T22:16:04-05:00