Attempted some "chemistry" this afternoon (hood still isn't up, waiting on the shelves so those can go in before the really expensive glassware gets in the way).

Minor problems:
I have a variety of writing implements in the lab with specific purposes and I can't find my mechanical pencil (regular pencil & solvent resistant pen yes, mechanical pencil no)

at least 1/2 of the TLC stains look like they have to be remade (the KMnO4 was gross, some of them I basically ran empty before moving, the ninhydrin got some weird solid crust on the cap threads, etc)

I might need to remake every mixture I have with ammonium hydroxide in it (could depend on the bottle)

the single outside handle on the double doors under the hood is really obnoxious since I'm not locking that cabinet (there is an internal handle to open the second door) and I maybe want to find something to act as an external handle for the second door (giant magnet? might not be possible, the piston arms on the doors are really heavy)

swapping the shelf nearest the combiflash for a wider one that didn't have a light mounted underneath means the collection area is weirdly dark (I think only the narrower shelves have lights though and I needed the deeper shelf to fit the racks)

1/?

Things I have done today (as legit parts of my job):
helped sweep & mop a really disgusting floor
mopped up the mess after we tipped over the bucket of dirty water onto the floor of another room
walked a cart across part of campus
walked the same cart back with a 20 L can of ethanol
met with a person from the machine shop to discuss repurposing some fancy incubator shelves
walked a second incubator shelf across part of campus, then back when the machine shop was already closed for the day
crawled around on the floor for 1-2 h while threading tubing through weird gaps in paneling and then fitting pipe insulation around the tubing (also splicing some tubing together because I didn't have two long pieces of the right type, and then having to trim ends anyway)

(there are probably more things, but I was doing the cleaning first with a grad student and turned to her and went "yeah, this is what it means to have a PhD")

#lablife #science #bioinformatics The kids are ok

Help me Fedi hive-mind! I have a small amount of mercury-contaminated glassware (an old bubbler) that I need to deal with. I have a vague memory of nitric acid being used, but this UIUC sheet is not in favor. I guess I could treat it like a thermometer and break it up, but that's a lot of glass shard to make and manage.
#mercury #chemistry #chemiverse #hazardous_chemicals #hazardous_waste #lablife
https://drs.illinois.edu/site-documents/ElementalMercury.pdf

Dancing robot | Part of the "Beauty and the Machine" research project supported by the BeLEARN hub, this whimsical take on the well-known Thymio reimagines digital education and programming.

[More about this @CenterLEARN]

When the results of a reaction are so unexpectedly bad (by NMR) that you have to put an appropriate emoji in the ELN...

Anyone with a lab balance for larger things (the type you usually weigh 100s of grams on) have a max weight recommendation? We need to buy one and the one we've been using in another lab has a max of 8.2 kg so it only reads in 0.1 g increments and I'd like to go lower so we can get accuracy to 0.01 g, but I don't know what a reasonable max is for most people.

I cannot explain quite how comforting it is to hear the nitrogen boiling from the traps in the Schlenk line while I watch boiling solvent being stripped from a reaction. Just feels like all is right with the world for a moment when endothermic and exothermic processes occur just as they should. In related news, made sooooo much catalyst today. #lablife #chemistry #chemiverse #pui #proflife

Our Summer intake MSc Nithish Sattoju just finished his time with us! Enjoy good conversation and discussion with him and also cool data wish him the very best! And yes I need to watch my waist line...#lablife

Leaving drink for Tobias and Clelia, who facilitated a cool project in the lab, now moving on to exciting new adventures in MRC Harwell and USA placement, very happy for you and wish you all the best! #lablife @mehranakhtar

Never ever ever ever turn stuff off in the lab unless you've triple-checked with everyone that has been in the lab in the last 2 weeks #LabEttiquet #LabLife

#lablife
a rare begining of the week to have good news on technical success: #Drosophila #Electroretinogram is starting to produce good data; DART system from @BFKlab is running too, so we can finally probe arousal threshold again!

#LabLife PSA-Standardize figures in your lab. Figure out what size micrograph generally looks good for your type of data, what size band etc.

I have a figure template that lays out panel sizes for micrographs with the preferred scale bar, band sizes for western blots, font sizes for labels and shows column widths for standard journals.

It makes it easy to move panels between different lab members or take panels from two papers for a single figure in a talk.