Heavy Metal, Baby (Part II): "It Never Fails"

One thing I know about this here life of ours...

Some things never fail... they're gonna always happen.

Hot and cold.

Night and day.

The rising and setting of the sun.

And in the past few elections, some politicians trying to rig and pull the bootleg (NO BILLARY, you won't get the Florida and Michigan delegates. Stop trying to steal the election!!)

Sigh.

Yes, things never fail to occur.

And in the world of chemistry...

It never fails...

That some doofus dumb ass challenged individual gets a notion to work in a chemistry lab.

It never fails... and I've been around more than my share of such folks.

Now, what I mean by "challenged individuals" is those people who well, they mean well, may be even very good people, but they are a bit on the clumsy side. They don't really think about what they are doing, don't ask for help, none of that. Nice people, but need to go take up a less adventurous profession...

Like Mountain climbing, perhaps.

And clumsy in a chemistry spells DANGEROUS.

If you didn't read the last post, then you won't appreciate where I am going with all this. So go read that last post (It ain't long... yet, it is quite informative;)

Anyway, I have a ton of experience with moisture-sensitive, air-sensitive and pyrophoric chemicals. And in grad school, I did research in these areas. I even have a few publications laying around here and there.

I am a safe chick in the lab. These days I'm not, since I work with fruits and veggies and such, but with weird ish that can catch fire, I watch myself.

Anyway, back in the day, I worked in an organometallics lab. I was the only girl in a crew of a bunch of dudes. This was cool, because I learned how to do bootleg maintenance on a lot of different types of equipment. Very fun stuff.

Well, we had this one guy in our group, an Asian dude name "Chang".

Chang was nice enough. Very soft-spoken and mannerable.

But he was CLUMSY as hell. Always dropping stuff. Breaking EXPENSIVE glassware that we'd had handblown by a glassblower. Let's just say, I wasn't very fond of him. And in his eyes, I was an angry black woman.

This was fine with me. Most people think I am a little crazy.

If I can get you to think that I'm just a bit "touched", then I can keep you from harassing me or touching any of my property.

And that was the case with Chang. I heard him say one day, "Gosh, that girl LadyLee... that girl is crazy!"

Yeah.

Anyway, I'd rather be crazy than clumsy. Any day.

So...

When working with moisture sensitive compounds, one must have completely dry glassware, solvents, etc. For example, your dishes and glasses sitting there in your kitchen cabinet look dry, but they are not dry. Not at all. There is water on them that you can't see.

Trust me, there is!

So we have to oven dry all of our special glassware and cool them down under a non-air atmosphere. (Yeah, there are ways to do that, and I won't get into that here.)

So, Chang was put in charge of ordering our supplies for the lab - glassware, solvents, etc...

You can't muck that up can you? I mean, you're just writing out orders. T'ain't that hard.

Goodness.

So...

The year was 1993, I believe. I went to lunch one day, had a good time, and came back to the lab. I noticed my lab mates, 2 guys- Joe and Tom - staring at one of our lab benches. Chang is standing behind them, rubbing the back of his neck, looking like he was about to cry. (That boy was such a crybaby. There were several times where I wanted to tell him "Stop being a b*tch!")

No one said anything when I walked in. I was enjoying the last of a snack size bag of potato chips.
"What are ya'll doing?" I asked.

No one said a word. Chang is getting more nervous by the minute. He starts pacing.

"What's up? Why ya'll standing around?"

"Shhhhhh," Joe said. He kept staring at the counter.

I look at the bench and there is some dust all over the bench. It looks like someone ground up some chalk and threw it on the work area.

"Guys, I'm sorry!!!" Chang wailed.

I crunch on more chips and stare at him. "What's wrong with Chang? And why does it smell like ether [ethyl ether solvent] all up in here?"

"Be quiet, LadyLee."


I was quiet, but I'm standing there, rattling my chip bag, crunching on chips and watching. This was all terribly interesting, you see.

Well, this particular area of the lab bench (one of our work areas) contained our solvent stills. A solvent still is a apparatus used to purify solvents. So whenever we bought solvents, like acetone for example (you know, finger polish remover), we had to get it REALLY pure and REALLY dry. If we didn't, the tiny bit of water in it will kill our chemical reactions.

An example of a solvent still is shown in the picture to the left (above). Usually these are put in a protected area, called a fume hood, but we were an adventurous bunch: we had our stills all out in the open on the counter/lab bench. We were a careful bunch, you see. We anchored it down good, and never knocked something like that over.

And we use pieces of sodium metal to make our solvents "bone dry". Normally, we would buy blocks of sodium stored under mineral oil and chop off whatever we needed. Drop the cubes of sodium over in the still and it sucks up the miniscule amounts of water. Very nice concept, except for one thing.

Chang decided he didn't want to order sodium blocks. He got the notion to order sodium powder.

I never knew sodium powder existed. But Chang found it and got it.

So, back to my story.

I was standing there, watching the guys, crunching on my chips.

"What's all that stuff on the bench?" I finally ask.

"I broke a still!" Chang wailed. "And the sodium powder got all over the place!"

"I believe I know how we can clean this up," Tom said. he left us and went to his desk a few feet away and returned quickly with an index card.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" I asked. "An index card?"

"Be quiet, LadyLee. We got it under control."

"Guys, I didn't do it on purpose!"

"Shh," I said. I have no idea why we were all concerned with being quiet. I went back to eating my chips. Pondered the situation. No one ever busts a still. That would be dangerous. I look at Chang. Yep, he would do something like this.

Tom took his index card and started trying to slide the powder into a big pile.

There were tiny sparks flying, but disappearing. And there were little noises, little sounds.

psst...psst...crackle...pop... sizzle... sizzle...pssssssst.... sizzle, psssssstt... bing....

That didn't sound or look very good.

************huge crickets*************

*crickets move and LadyLee slowing stops chewing chips*

I took a small step back away from them.

(I was putting 2 and 2 together, you see.)

Took another step back. This time, a HUGE step.

"Guys, I'm sorry!" Chang hollered. He was near hysterics.

"Shut up, Chang!" Tom yelled.

"Yo, I'll see ya'll later," I said.

*Ladylee backing out of room and sprinting HARD down the hall at FULL speed like she in the Olympics*

And that's when I heard it....

It wasn't a loud BOOM.

It was more like "POOOOOOF"

But the loudest "poof" I've ever heard. Imagine what it would sound like for some dayum secret portal to another planet to open up.

Yeah. That's what it sounded like.

I'd hit a corner at the end of the hall by then and was gone.

I heard the guys yelling "Get the fire extinguisher! Run!"

I came back a few minutes later, after peeping around the corner, of course. Went back into the lab, even.

Couldn't see a thing! Just extinguisher smoke and dust everywhere, when the dust started to clear, Tom was standing there, in a hail of smoke, holding that extinguisher like it was a blow torch, or some huge weapon from a sci-fi film, like he was trying to kill some aliens.

"LadyLee you should've seen it! It was a big fire ball," Tom said.

"Ya'll are crazy!" I yelled. "You heard that stuff sparking up. And it smell like ether up in here! Ya'll are some fools!"

"I'm sorry guys." Chang hollered. He had tears in his eyes.

"I'ma tell!" I yelled. I pointed my finger hard at Chang. "You always doing stupid stuff, Chang. I'ma tell on YOU! And I ain't helping ya'll clean up in here!"

*LadyLee leaves room and goes looking to snitch on Chang*

Chang got a good tongue lashing from our advisor. Serves him right.

Here's the problem with sodium dust/powder. It has more surface area than a cube, pebble, or block. And with them skidding it around with that card, it reacted with the solvent and water vapor in the air.

Nice big fireball for YOU!

So be careful, boys and girls, when you fooling around with sodium metal.

You would think Chang would do better.

But he didn't learn a doggone thing...

It was this fool's fault that I caught fire some time later that year... and a Oldgirl opened up the book of cuss on him.

Hmm....

It never fails...

Thanks for hanging out with me during **CHEMISTRY WEEK**. Hope you learned a thang or two. And thanks for allowing me to be the nerd I am, lol.

My fire adventure will be continued, sometime next week.