00:10
The other day, this was maybe, this was in May. Yeah, it was a while ago.
So we're, first of all, we're a physical chemistry lab and we don't typically use chemicals in a way
that many wet chemistry, traditional sort of, you know, organic synthesis, inorganic synthesis
nanomaterials, like they have solvents all over the place, you know, they have fume hoods and
everything. We do have fume hoods, but it's a very old one. And we don't really use solvents a lot.
We don't really make new chemicals. That's not, that's typically not our job. We usually
decide on a sample that we can buy off the shelf. You know, that's sort of one of the requirements.
And it is weird that this happened in our lab because we don't use it. That doesn't mean though
that we're not trained to use, you know, chemicals. We know what's dangerous. We know that we should
put acid and bases separate, acid and organics separate. And if there's specific things like,
you know, what to do with HF and stuff, you know, dangerous things like that. We do know that.
But so this, one day we were cleaning some ionoptic parts and it's a molybdenum ionoptic
parts. It's a type of metal. And basically the way to clean it is to put it in a piranha solution.
Do you know what it is? No. Okay. So piranha solution is usually a cocktail of acids that
edges away the surface of metal so that it eats up the surface of the metal. And then that's how
it cleans it. Molybdenum is probably kind of an outdated choice of material for ionoptics.
This is a part of what 25 year old instruments. So it makes sense that some of the parts are
very old fashioned, but we needed to clean it. And then from what we can look up on the
Google scholar, the way to clean it is to dip it in hot nitric acid and then dip it in hot
hydrochloric acid and then rinsing it with deionized water. Now nitric acid is a pretty
nasty acid and hot nitric acid is extra nasty, but it was still better alternative to using
actual piranha solution or doing HF, hydrofluoric acid, which is even more dangerous, right? Like
03:05
it eats up your bone. This is less so. We can be careful. We do everything in a fume hood. It's
fine. And we successfully conducted this cleaning experiments. We did the day of the work and we
were cleaning it up, right? And we have a waste bottle dedicated just for the nitric acid. We
have a waste bottle dedicated just for hydrochloric acid and nothing got mixed up. But I think what
happened is the bottle that the nitric acid waste was in had a tiny, tiny amount of something
organic. It could be a piece of a tiny fiber or some kind of organic material that got in there.
After all, we were trying to clean the surface of the metal. So if there is some organic parts
on the top layer, it's possible that there's some trace amount of organic there, right?
So what happened is I think the person who was cleaning up closed the bottle completely rather
than using a vented valve with air holes so that if there's a pressure building, it can escape. If
there's a gas buildup, it can escape. So we didn't really think about this. We were just
careful about not mixing it, but didn't think about this gas buildup problem. We thought it
would be safe in a waste bottle. Little did we know there was enough gas buildup to shatter this
glass bottle. It exploded inside the fume hood. Thank goodness the fume hood was 80% closed,
so most of the explosion was contained inside the fume hood. The fume hood had a little hibi
at the end of it. Some pieces of glass flew away everywhere in the lab, but no one got hurt,
nothing got damaged. But that was the biggest lab accident I have ever had in my entire time
working here. That was pretty scary. I wasn't even there. I left my colleagues to be like,
okay, you guys do the cleanup, I'll go do something else in the other lab.
So I was not physically there. There were two people who were working on cleaning up,
and one of them was pretty close to the fume hood. Thankfully, everyone was wearing eye goggles
and extra protection, just because on a daily basis we don't really wear white coat. We don't
06:00
really wear white coat, we don't wear lab coats, we don't wear goggles in a way that is required.
We wear sunglasses for optical goggles if we're doing things with laser,
alignment laser, but if the laser is finished aligning and it's enclosed in a box, we don't
wear those either. It was fortunate that we were all wearing goggles, so extra protection.
Yeah, that was so scary. They called the facilities immediately, people came right
away, so it was good to know that this kind of emergency situation is taken care of properly.
Gosh, that was really weird. After months later, we still find tiny little amber glasses,
shards in a random corner of the lab. I was like, could this be from the explosion?
Otherwise, our lab is very peaceful, nothing crazy happens. I bet
people upstairs in an organic lab are doing something way more dangerous,
but that is what happened. Be careful, everybody. Give it a vent, use a vented
valve. For anything that has any potential for gas buildup, that could be dangerous.
And thankfully, it's not a routine procedure. We don't have to do this ever again,
or at least not in the foreseeable future. Do you have any lab accidents like that,
or is your lab a pretty peaceful one? It's a peaceful one, but when I was in
the university, there used to be, I think there's still a regular fire alarm thing,
and you have to evacuate for one hour. Does it happen? Yeah, it used to happen pretty often
because there was a building connected to where my department was, and they were doing something
strange. That's what we heard. Not suspicious at all.
And then there'd be a fire alarm, and usually it's a false alarm, but we all had to evacuate.
And one time when we were running an experiment where participants were instructed that they'll
be presented small sounds, like through earphones, and they were put into a very small chamber.
09:09
And then while we were presenting those small, small sounds, there was a big fire alarm
started off. So they were attached with an electrode on their head,
and they were presented sounds. And then because of the fire alarm, we had to evacuate. So we opened
the experiment room, and then I talked to the subject. Okay, now there's a fire alarm,
so we have to evacuate. And the subject, the participants seemed to be
surprised. Oh, I thought this was the experiment.
But you said it would be a small sound, so I was wondering, oh, this is really huge.
This is different from what I anticipated. No, this is the fire alarm, so we have to evacuate.
So there was no time for us to take off all the electrodes, so we had to evacuate with all the
electrodes attached to the outside department. Wow, I never thought that that would be
a worry for somebody, you know? Like, oh, what if I need to evacuate while I have
10 electrodes in my hair? Wow. So yeah, I think that happened twice. Yeah, we had to evacuate
with a fully equipped participant. I forgot that that didn't happen when I was supposed to be
sleeping in an MRI. Yeah, we did electrodes, yes. Yeah, that was, it wasn't really a lab accident,
but yeah, yeah, we had to evacuate. Well, yeah, that's not a lab accident. It's just more like a
just a general, general mishaps. Evacuation. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they are never at the right
timing. I remember during my first semester of grad school, I think it was one of the quantum
quantum mechanics midterm. Within like first 15 minutes or something, like we were all still doing
first problems and then fire alarm went off. It was like, oh, I guess we gotta go. And then the
rest of the midterm became take home exam. So that was very nice. That's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But
yeah, those are never happening at the right time. Yeah. Also, hopefully, you know, no one who is
listening to this have had any more dangerous story than I have had. I really hope it doesn't
happen again. We're very careful about waste bottles nowadays. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, sometimes,
12:06
you know, science can be risqué, I guess. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and
find us at Eigo de Science on Twitter. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
