• Question: What's the funniest thing you have ever seen happen in the lab?

    Asked by madz to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 8 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      A new student in our lab walked into our meeting, with lab coat and goggles on, holding a cylinder with seawater with something floating in it – she had let go of the salinity metre that measures how salty water is and couldn’t think of how to get it out again. The funny thing was that she just looked little and helpless and said: “Ooops! I dwopped it!”
      We did manage to get it out and fixed it in the end, but we still laugh about it! 🙂

    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      When I was completing my undergraduate course we had to do all day lab classes. I was busy working away when suddenly I heard a “whoooooooosh” noise from another lab bench where my friend was, he had leant over too far and caught his hair in the bunsen burner! He had quite long frizzy hair & he managed to move out the way before getting hurt, but for weeks afterwards he had a strange uneven patch of hair on one side. Whenever we see him even now, someone always asks “can you smell burning??”

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      Hmm tough question Madz,

      We do laugh a lot but usually at things people say. As for funny things I’ve seen ??
      We grow cells in culture and we were amused at some that happened to grow into rude shapes – but it was the conversations and banter that were more ammusing really.

    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      I do reactions in glass flasks and use rubber stoppers to seal the tops with. One day I was doing a reaction that released lots of gas and the stopper shot off, flew over he lab and landed in the top of someone elses flask! It was amazing and I couldn’t do it agin if I tried for the rest of my life.

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