Fire in Post Graduate Lab!!

Heyo everyone...

So today's story is right from my diary for all of you :D

During my final year of post graduation, we had some naive juniors who absolutely had no idea about any minor or major technicalities in the microbiological labs. In fact some of them were always confused about simple conversions like mg to mcg, etc. etc. and kept asking us the doubts making me forget my own conversion skills :x

What was I talking about??

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Oh yes, the fire!!

So once they were extracting lecithin from egg yolk. For that they were supposed to boil the extract in petroleum ether in the boiling water bath. First time, they left the ether boiling, due to which it exploded and then everything was covered with egg, like in Mr.Bean's episode where he explodes the white paint to color his entire house. 

Still the damage was not huge and it didn't came into staff's notice. But patience is seriously not a virtue for these guys. Immediately after wiping everything they started again with the extraction, promising us to be careful this time. And this time they were too much careful to avoid the explosion and hence kept the burner a little way from the beaker. That's when the flame came in contact with the petroleum ether and there was fire in the beaker. Everybody tried to pacify it by in vain. The fire turned big and then  teachers could see it from the glass panes. One of the non teaching faculty whose brain was successfully working used the fire extinguisher and everything became normal in minutes. 

Thankfully nobody scolded us, in fact everyone started laughing. 

LOL, thses things are seriously a part of daily life of microbiologists.

Therefore, if you have a story of any such crazy incidents, then please do share with us :)

Lots of love

-Staph.