He Snuck Potassium into His Pocket

about the antimony pill, the less disturbing ritual was to drink wine from antimony cups (it's a component of pewter so it's been around since pre-Roman era) and the tartaric acid in the wine reacted with antimony metal to make (potassium) antimony tartrate in the wine, which served the same purgative effect. an antimony cup would be passed down between generations, because it leached so little substance out per use.

Ok I'll bite. Here's my favorite science joke for the end screen: Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Ohm are carpooling to a conference when they get pulled over by a cop. He comes to the window and asks, "Sir do you have any idea how fast you were going?" Heisenberg says, "No, but I know exactly where I am!". The cop says, "you were going 85 in a 70", to which Heisenburg shouts, "Great, now we're lost >:(". The cop thinks this is suspicious and decides to search the vehicle. He comes back and says "Are you aware there is a dead cat in the trunk of this car?" Schrodinger says "Well we do now, asshole". The cop arrests all of them for animal cruelty, but also get Ohm for resisting.

I see a couple of recurrent themes in the Chempilations, especially home chemistry mishaps: (1) Wanting to use a much larger quantity than actually needed to observe the reaction; (2) Not knowing, or not thinking about, how your chemical would react with other common substances in the vicinity (water, air, metals, oils, etc.) if it came in contact with them.

Small molten metal story; my dad, because we were very poor growing up in the 90s, rebuilt the engines and other parts of our family van when they broke. One day, he was working underneath the van on the starter. He had disconnected the battery and was busy removing whatever it was holding the assembly in place. Somehow, the battery cables wiggled their way back to the battery terminals. So at some point my dad’s gold wedding ring shorts two electrical connections straight from the battery. The arc managed to melt a chunk of the ring and violently splatter it over my dad’s face (mostly his upper lip because of the grimace he was making trying to get the starter to come out). It hurt pretty bad and he couldn’t shave for months, but he avoided any serious injury luckily. And being not a stupid person, he never did work on a car without double-checking the safety of what he was doing first, like removing batteries, wearing gloves, etc. And that is the story of how my dad unwillingly grew a mustache for a year.

Thank you for this, the next time I steal potassium I will put it in my underwear.

A similar story to the potassium pants predicament, in my first high school chemistry class we were told the story of a former student who had taken a liking to the similar reaction of sodium and water. This student snuck into the chemical storage room and decided to steal a golf ball sized piece of sodium which he put into his pants pocket. Over the next hour the moisture from his leg was causing the sodium to heat up in his pocket, so the student decided he had to get rid of it. To get rid of the warm lump of sodium the student had the genius idea of flushing the lump down the toilet. My teacher said that the entire school shook from the explosion and the student was found in the newly flooding bathroom with a broken leg from the piece of toilet that struck him in the leg. I’ve always wanted to see this reaction first hand but the school wisely banned continuing to use sodium around a bunch of high-schoolers.

In the Periodic Videos episode for potassium, the metal was referred to as "evil".

I have been to a fragrance company too. The GC-olfactometry is apparently standard in this field, but I had never seen it before either. It is fascinating. It is literally a GC with a plastic face mask at the end. As you can imagine, this thing can be quite hot. The user sniffs in this mask during the whole run and has a button to press when they smell a change. Afterwards, the chromatogram shows the button presses and you can select the different fractions. Sounds exhausting though.

The electric kettle story reminds me of the time I was descaling our kettle on April Fool’s day. I accidentally left the vinegar in the kettle and pranked my dad when he was making coffee, making it the most appropriate day to forget to empty the kettle after descaling it. I’ve never had the problem of the descaling water getting discolored though - it sounds like that poster’s kettle is made out of pretty cheap stainless steel. I’d be a bit worried about it leaching metal ions into solution during regular use- the chromium in stainless steel is no joke!

Two chemists walk into a bar - I'll take a glass of H2O, says the first one - I'll take a glass of H2O too, says another After they're served their glasses of liquids and drink them the second one dies.

A colleage has stakes in several foundries and can tell a lot of stories about the industry. He told me that the most dangerous metal to cast is aluminium because steel is so hot it just leidenfrosts off you and you won't be hurt, but aluminium is not hot enough and sticks. He told me that every so often a worker would get burnt and that first he won't feel anything but they start to give pain medication right away and call the ambulance and hope they arrive early enough to bring him to the hospital before the excrutiating pain of burns start. Tough industry, but he says workers are generally happy because they can directly see the fruit of their labor.

Tracking someone back to their desk by the trail of fluorescent dye is one of the funnier ways to catch someone doing a dumb.

A friend of mine was once a driver for an aluminum chemical truck. The truck was loaded, without his knowledge, with a caustic cleaning chemical instead of the soap it was supposed to be transporting. He managed to make it to his destination without a mishap, and parked the truck and went on with his day. Later (I don't remember how much) He was visited by DHS agents, investigating the truck's shocking but inevitable explosion. They had no sense of humor.

My dad taught me the same H2SO4 poem. Side note, my sister-in-law is studying anthropology and tracking the possible origins of things like that poem is a big part of it. So lately I've been having fun trying to trace possible origins of things passed through our family like that. The H2SO4 one seems to be documented back to at least the late 1800s, but no clear origin. Chemistry folklore (whether true or not) is quite interesting it might make a good video.

That janitor is the embodiment of the “Almighty Janitor” trope

The pink thing reminds me of KMnO4. Handling it is a good reminder of how easily you can contaminate gloves, work benches etc. you start washing a surface and all these sub-milligram particles start dissolving and making pink splotches.

Max Gergel recounted a similar (childhood) story about stealing potassium in his memoir. Fortunately it was stored under mineral oil rather than something more flammable, which the thief (I don't remember if it was him or his friend) wiped off before stuffing the piece into his back pocket. Of course the fresh potassium started to react with air and eventually caught fire. They were caught, of course. Gergel's somewhat rambling memoir "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide" is a must read. A lot of yikes-worthy stories. Gergel died just a few years ago, at the age of 96.

Regarding industry's sketch practices when it comes to hazardous chemicals: you would be amazed how much more unsafe things can get in non-lab settings. If you ever want to go down that rabbit hole, the USCSB actually has a youtube channel where they present real cases of industrial chemical accidents.

I recall an 8th grade science class and a physical lab for earth science , where the students were to identify a suite of mineral samples by testing the physical properties of each sample . One of the tests was the ole acid test using a small beaker containing dilute HCL and an eyedropper , to determine the presence of carbonate minerals . It seems " SOMEBODY " encouraged their classmates to test the metallic samples with the acid , while others did so of their own accord . The metallics of course , were common lead and iron sulfides , and created H2S , which caused one student to vomit , which then triggered the dreaded sympathetic puke party and a stampede to fresh air for the remainder of the period . This would be a huge deal today , but , really didn't raise any eyebrows then , especially since the chemistry teacher routinely managed to set the chem lab on fire at least once a year , with the Carbon Disulfide .

I have a friend with which I simultaneously did my bachelor's project in the same lab. I was just doing my thing and suddenly there was a bang, accompanied by sounds of glass pieces. It turns out that my friend, who was working on BODIPYs dyes (I think), made a rookie mistake. She was going to extract the compound with dichloromethane, but it took forever (turned out to be a very prominent dye). She decided that heating the dichloromethane would increase the solubility and make it go faster, so she grabbed the heat gun and heated up the big 2L separatory funnel. However, this turned out to be a bad idea when the valve is closed and you are holding the stopper closed tightly. The floor, the fume hood, the cupboards, her lab coat were all covered in purple. They tried to remove it, but it turns out that scrubbing the floor with DCM only removed the protective coating and made it even more visible. It has been 3.5 years and the stains are still there. Fortunately no one got harmed, but it could have gone really badly. Especially regarding the fact that this was luckily one of the few times she DID wear gloves.