Light it up!

Note: With any story I tell during ***CHEMISTRY WEEK*** there will be a short chemistry lesson. This is for background purposes, so you'll understand what I'm talking about. Don't worry though, it will be something you can relate to:)

One of my first mishaps in the chemistry lab occured waaay back in 1989, and involves the compound to the left, which is called a diox.etane. Now you may not have heard of it, but you have seen them.

Remember those "glow in the dark" necklaces and bracelets you use to buy when you went to the amusement park or fair back in the day? (Do they still sell those?)

Well, you notice how those necklaces glowed, and then they started to fade?

The chemicals responsible for that are dioxe.tanes.

A better example: remember those fireflies we use to catch in Mason jars when we were little?

The chemical that caused them to light up is a diox.etane.

So I think you get the picture. Diox.etanes are a type of chemical compund that give off light.

The scientific term for this phenomena is chemiluminescenc.e (for the fireflies light, it is bioluminescenc.e.

Another point of interest: The compounds are also known as a type of peroxide.

Now, we all use hydrogen peroxide at home. I use it as an astringent, and I suppose you do to. But, what we use at home is 3% peroxide, 97% water. This is enough to give that "bubbling" effect that we see when we place it on a cut. It is essentially reacting with the cut.

But peroxide/water mixtures are available in different concentrations, but not to the general public though. Why?

Well, a mixture of 30% peroxide/70% water REALLY reacts with the skin. Let's just say that if you get some on your skin, it sounds like chicken frying in grease. (Not that dramatic, but that was the term I used for it, as you can hear the sizzle). The skin blisters and turns white and stays that way for a few days.

A 90% peroxide/10% water mixture - well... that has to be kept really, really cold. If I'm remembering correctly, at least -10 degrees celcius.

If it heats up to room temperature, it is EXPLOSIVE.

Uh, and that is bad.

Enough of the chemistry lesson.

My story. (Don't worry, it is short).

So...

When I was in undergrad, I did research in a lab that specialized in making new and interesting dioxet.anes. I was making 2400 bucks per summer doing this. (I was 19 and 20 at the time, and making that much money over the summer? You couldn't tell me I wasn't RICH!!)

Anyway, I made many of these and we did experiments to test the rate at which they decomposed, i.e., gave off light. That is what was happening with those glowing necklaces we bought at the amusement parks: the chemical in them was decomposing.

The issha with what I was doing is that we only made a small amount of these compounds at a time, only a few milligrams (even though these were usually thick liquids, think of it being no more than a pinch of salt.)

So, I had this conversation with my advisor one day.

"Dr. B, I need more of my diox.etane to test. It looks like I'm going have to do the reaction at least 5 times."
He leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a minute. "You don't have time for that. I need those for this paper I'm trying to get out."
"Well, it's only safe to make a little at a time," I said. I felt funny reminding him of this, as he was one of the pioneers in the field of dioxe.tanes.
"You can make a lot of it. Make about 3 grams of it."

I just stared at him. I really wanted to run from the room. One of the ingredients for making the dioxeta.nes was that frickin' 90% peroxide solution. I didn't want no parts of having that ish out of the deep freezer for too long.

"Dr. B, are you sure about that?"
"Yes, LadyLee. You can do that. I made about 6 grams once when I was at Har.vard."

I didn't really care about no dayum Harvar.d. I was more concerned about not blowing myself up.

"Are you sure," I repeated.
"You can do it, LadyLee. Just get it done."

I was apprehensive about it. We talked a bit longer about precautions (he knew I had a tendency to be a skeptic about stuff in general). But if I kept everything REAL cold, it would be all good. I discussed it with my lab partner Timmy-Tim (Cowgirl Cre's hubby). He has always been my lab road dog, and he thought I could do it.

If Timmy-Tim said I could do it... well, I could do it!

So, I did made a large batch of diox.etane. Incidently, you have to do this reaction in total darkness. But we got tired of that after awhile, and figured out how to do it with one of those red lights you use for developing photos. So, I hooked up my red lights, and did my reaction.

It went well enough and the final product looked good. It was a thick green gooey solution that looked like clear snot. Yeah, it looked okay. I made sure to keep it in a deep freezer, all nice and cold.

I was in the lab one day with this Indian dude. He was watching me fool around with my three grams of diox.etanes. I would remove the vial from the freezer, get a little with a dropper, then put it back up.

Well that ish heated up, I suppose. It couldn't have been no more than a few degrees, maybe 0 degrees.

It instantaneously went from snot green to black. There was a big flash of light.

Then it started spewing smoke. Thick white noxious smoke.

The Indian dude looked at me. I looked at him.

He yelled. "RUN!", then took off running.

I hesitated, but took off after him. I think I knocked over a chair in the process of getting out of the lab.

Man, when it was all said and done, that one little vial of solution smoked out the whole area. I think we were at the end of a hall and could just see thick white smoke at the other end. I thought the poor indian guy was going to have a heart attack. Me, well, I went and found a payphone. I remembered that my Mama was getting off from work around that time. She always hit past downtown past my school on her way home.

"Hey Lisa, what's going on," she said.
"Ma, pick me up on your way home."
"Why?" she asked.
"Don't worry about that. Just pick me up."

She picked me up. That was a Monday I believe. Heck, I think we stopped by the liquor store to get some beer or something. I was a nervous wreck. I told her what happened, and as I expected, she didn't understand.

I didn't go back to school for 3 days. Had decided that I would never go back. (Too much beer drinking, I suppose, caused THAT attitude.)

Timmy-Tim called me at home and we talked.

"Dr. B. said come back to school," he said. "He said we still love you."
"N'awl man! And you know what? He said it would be alright, and it wasn't."
"We still love you. Come back to school."

Well, after much coaxing, I did indeed show back up at school.

Anyway, we talked about that for a long time. I was really going off on the indian dude ("Man, how you gonna just take off running and leave me behind like that?"). The indian dude looked at me sideways for awhile after that. All, I know, he was older than the rest of us, maybe in his 40s, and he was a fast runner.

There was much discussion about what happened. Turns out, any bit of impurity, say a speck of dirt or something, causes these sensitive dioxetan.es to spontaneously combust or something like that.

*LadyLee giving Dr. B. the evil eye*

But I learned a big lesson: better follow directions, and don't do crazy stuff, even if the advisor says it's alright. I learned from that to stand my ground when I didn't feel comfortable doing certain things in the lab...

But that still didn't keep other mishaps, worse ones, from happening over the years...

Hmmm...