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What I've Done Wrong
I'm sure you've been told not to do a lot of things. Of course, few listen. Perhaps some practical experience could help some people. Some people I know don't know about stuff on here...but I don't think any of the people that I'd be concerned with finding out read this, so it probably doesn't matter. I have tried to present things in chronological order, but in the end I grouped things by the sort of type of accident they were. Mostly, however, things occured a couple of years ago and I don't recall doing anything really stupid for a while.
Don't rapidly cool glassware!
I was under the misconception that borosilicate glass could undergo very rapid heat changes. Well...yes...it can...more than glass, but not from extremly hot to really cool in less than a second. I had heated up a Pyrex measuring cup with a flame, and decided I wanted to cool it. I decided to place it in some cold water to save some time. CRACK! Had to clean up some glass.
Don't mix a strong acid and a strong base!
Well, I heard that a lot of energy gets put off when this happens. In fact, quite a bit. It was enought to crack a Pyrex measuring cup to pieces. Very cool though...huge column of steam and a bubbling solution. I actually did this much later, knowing the risks, but thought it would be fun to see.
Don't store chemicals in the house! A dual accident.
Well, I had this waste jar stored in my room...don't ask. It had sulpheric acid and acetone in it. I have a carpet(which is being deomolished as I write this, getting a Pergo floor) which didn't take too kindly to a lose lid when it tipped over. Quite interesting to watch actually. The carpet is brown. It turned dark brown for about a second, and then turned a sort of light pink. Then I tried to get some paper towels to wipe it up...which took away the carpet, leaving some sort of thing the carpet was bound to. Hard to repair. Don't do it.
As suggested, there is a second part to this. I had heard that plastic was acid resistant. Well, thats great! I had this Tinture of Iodine bottle from safeway that was this dark brown plastic. I decided to put some concentrated sulpheric acid in it. I let it sit for a couple of minutes, and everything seemed fine. I noticed that some of the plastic on the lid had turned an odd color, but didn't really think of it as being that important since nothing was happened. This has led to the most destructive acciden't I've had. Don't assume. So...I put it above my bed on a shelf made of wood. The next morning...I noticed something odd. I don't remember what...but something caught my attention over by my shelf. Well, as it turns out, SOME plastic is acid resistant, but not all types. The acid had eaten through its bottle. It started by engraving a nice circle on the wood it was on. It also traveled along a groove in the shelf and had eaten up along the wall. I actually didn't notice this until a while after because a curtain had been in the way from me seeing this. So...it had dripped off the front of the first shelf..onto a shelf below it...where it caused more damage. From there, it dripped down where it happened to land on my Direct-X game programming book. I neutralized it and only had major damage in the "sprites" section of the book. Turned out that section of the disk was corrupted as well...odd. Anyway, so the book made a nice channel where it proceeded to travel down and hit my backpack. It was eaten up in several places. The carpet also suffered a minor acid burn(about a 1X1 inch square). Quite a while after, I discovered a couple of droplet areas which still had activated acid on them. I soaked the vicinity with sodium bicarbonate to try to eliminate any future problems.
Wear protective equipment when handling dangerous chemicals!
I had some concentrated sulpheric acid. Kind of fun. Whatever I was doing with it, I was pouring it from one container to another. Some spilled onto my right hand. Know why I still remember its my right hand? I still have a scar to remind me. The single drop landed on one spot, and fell off, leaving a trail as it went. This was very painful. Luckily, I keep a source of water around whenever I am working with chemicals for safety/fire reasons. So, I quickly ran to a hose and applied water. OWWW!!!! You may remember that when you add water to an acid(especially a concentrated one), that it will release a good deal of energy. This was enough to heat it up quite considerably, causing additional pain. Luckily, additional water cooled it quite quickly. After a couple of weeks, it healed up pretty good. The trail dissapeared, but the spot where the drop landed is still there. I always keep a sodium bicarbonate solution handy now.
If you don't know what gas it is, don't breath it!
To quote from my chemistry teacher regarding a certain red gas, "I can't remember exactly what gas that is, but based on its color, I wouldn't breath it." (from dropping penny into nitric acid) Well, I had some previous experienec with that gas. I was trying to nitrate some cotton. I found some old cotton clothing that I was going to throw away anyway and decided it was a good source of material. So, I took my bottle, added some cotton strips, some sulpheric acid, and some potassium nitrate. After letting it sit for a couple of minutes, a red gas started to come out...and then some more...and soon a lot was forming. I decided to put my thumb over the bottle to stop it from coming out. DUMB! It was more of a sacrificial move so my brother could get away. Anyway, I let go, a large cloud went up, sealed off the door into the house, and was in a safe zone. I anywhere the gas had contacted my hand(espeically the area where I plugged the bottle), my skin turned yellow and died off. Not painful or anything, but it doesn't look very healthy. Got very dry while it happened.
The poisonous gas trilogy part two: more things not to breath
Well, I had been told how chlorine gas was really reactive, and, as a result, very bad to breath. Of course, that made it something interesting since you could do a lot of reactions with it. So...I decided to make some. Well, I did breath some. Not on the first try, but later. I developed an extreme cough. It lasted about a week. For around a year, I had a weezing if I didn't breath in a certain way. REALLY BAD! I don't think this needs much comment to distract from the message.
The poisonous gas trilogy conclusion: unexpected releases
I had some weak hydrochloric acid. I had been getting it as toilet cleaner. Mostly harmless. So, I was transerring it into this plastic container to use for soemthing(don't remember what). Turns out, some sort of reaction arose. To this date, I am not sure what happened as subsequent tests caused no reaction. My best guess is that something caused the hydrogen chloride to come out of solution. Curious if it was hydrogen, I wafted some. Good thing I didn't take a full hit! It turned out to be bad to breath. I left the area. This was relativly soon after the chlorine incident and was the final straw that started the wheezing. It actually didn't start until a couple of weeks later, but I'm pretty sure this was the cause of it.
Hydrogen + Oxygen + Enclosed Tank + Flame = BAD
Well, this one had it coming. I had a 1 gallon grape juice container that I was performing electrolysis in. I had a solenoid set up on it. The cool thing was that it would build up pressure. I used this to fill up some ballons. Well, one time my brother and I decided to try to make a flame jet with it. This involved lighting the gas line. It worked really well the first time. I put a different nozzel on it. We tried again, and something was causing these pop noises and the flame to go out. So, instead of thinking about what might have been the problem, we(he actually was lighting these) decided to try a few more times. Well, one time, it backfired into the tank. Now, there wasn't a whole lot of hydrogen in there since there was a lot of water, but there was a decent amount. Maybe 100cm^3. In any case, it caused the larger of my two lab explosions. Water shot everywhere and got both of us wet. VERY loud and we where in a sort of inclosed area which made things worse. We where shell shocked...sort of mindlessly paced around a bit. Our mom ran over to the window. She asked, "was that one of your hydrogen balloons?" I quickly assured her it was.
More fun with explosive gases: spontaneous combustion
Well, I still didn't have good hydrochloric acid. Now, I get a gallon of it for less than three bucks at the hardware store(concentrated, too). So, I had heard that combining chlorine and hydrogen causes hydrogen chloride to form. Sounded perfect! I'd take a line filled with hydrogen and one with chlorine, and feed them through some water. Well, the hydrogen was produced by a based reaction, so it contained traces of sodium hydroxide. On the other hand, the chlorine was produced by a base reaction, and so contained acid. The reaction of chlorine and hydrogen was already pretty exothermic. Additionally, I was reacting a strong base and acid together in their vapor form. Caused things to get very hot. Apparantly the lines hadn't been flushed good enough. Teh hydrogen ignited. I disconnected the flask generating hydrogen as well as the one producing chlorine. I added some base the the chlorine one to halt production. However, the hydrogen was still a major problem. It was in a side arm flask. The side arm was still producing a hydrogen jet, which was on fire. Sort of entertaining, but I was afraid the flask was going to explode. So, I was brave and took out the stopper. The gas inside ignited, but only with a small flash as it put itself out. No damage, but a dangerous situation.
Don't do purposely stupid things with flammible materials!
This has got to be the most outright stupid thing I have done. I had a pile of low grade gunpowder(the sort that just burns, but doesn't really burn all that quickly). I had something else that was burning...a fuse or soemthing...maybe another pile of gunpowder. I was curious if a spark could set it off from the other burning thing...welll DUH of course. And what if it did? Yeah...big dangerous fire. So...I ended up torching part of my workbench as well as my large spool of magnet wire. I also knocked off my nice graduated cylinder. I miss that....I now have a fire extinguisher on my lab table.
Don't light flammable materials when you yourself have flammable materials on you
All right...I had some methonal which I wanted to burn on the ground for fun. So, I poured some out, but, since it didn't have a very good pour spout, some spilled on my hand. So, I proceeded to take my lighter to try to light the stuff on the ground. Turns out, when I was lighting it, the sparks also ignited my thumb! I quickly put it out. Turns out, as long as enough alcohol is left, it doesn't actually warm up your skin. So, I proceded to soak my hand in alcohol and light it. Didn't get hurt...but really stupid.
Be careful when washing glassware!
I took our hose to try to wash out a beaker over our cement floor. Well, the water wasn't coming out very fast, so I decided to increase the pressure a bit. As it turned out, it had increased it enough so that while a steady stream was at a fine level, it built up a lot of pressure for the inital blast. The blast was enough to know the beaker out of my hands since my hands had had some sodium hydroxide on them(eats your hands in such a way that even a little will make them slippery). The beaker shot with great force about a foot to the ground below. 50mL Pyrex beaker RIP.