Lab stories

Typical biologists.

>Animal phisiology lab
>Need to do a cannulation with alcohol to a rat
>Nobody knows how to cannulate
>Nobody wants to cannulate
>I'm the brave one
>Cannulate while professor tell me how to do it
>Rat starts to squirm while alcohol are dropping inside
>Rat starts to bleed as fuck from nose and mouth
>Rat collapse, everybody looking frightened
>KEK

>have no problem taking/giving blood/inserting I.Vs
>would break my heart doing it to a rat

I think I'm that much of a pussy cause the rat doesn't know why that shit is happening to it. Kinda sad honestly

Animal physiology is the socially acceptable reason to be a psychopath!

I had to put one mouse into terminal anaestisia. I injected the lethal dose solution, waited 5 mins, but the mouse was still going. Injected more. Still, mouse was as vigorous as ever. Third dose. Still going. I ask the teacher. She gives me a concentrated mix. After 13x the original lethal dose injected at various sites, the mouse starts to become dizzy.

The mouse wasted good 2 hours of my time.

Doing a virology lab and we have to inoculate chicken embryos with vaccinia and influenza viruses

To do this you gotta put a hole in the egg but you can't break the membrane that sits right underneath it

I'd say 50% of the class broke through that membrane and some even outright crushed their eggs. We had to make our holes with nails pushed through corks. It was stupid and the lab instructor agreed

One guy managed to stick himself with the sharps that we used to inoculate the embroys with. I sat there staring at him wondering how he had managed to do that

In another lab we had to use these fuckhuge metal scissors to open something. We had to sterilize them first over a flame and some idiot thought it was a good idea to hold them over the flame for a full minute instead of flaming them for an instant like you're suppose to. I went to grab them and they nearly melted through my nylon gloves. That fuck

>forensic anth lab
>working as assistant
>estimating the age of unidentifiable murder victims based on wear of their public symphysises
>joints are the greasiest bone parts in the human body
>the pubic symphysis is the greasiest joint of all
>examining the billowing and planing of dozens of symphysises, carefully recording every observation in notebook, comparing with other age indicators
>oh this chick had a few babies
>this one played soccer
>hands dripping with grease from rotting crotches of murder victims
>tell self: don't touch your face don't touch your lips don't chew your nails for fuck sakes just do this and wash your hands
>finish aging all the pelvises
>spend like an hour at sink scrubbing my hands up to elbows, cleaning under nails, etc
>lock away the remains
>pick up my stuff and go to give results to prof
>start chewing on my pen and get a mouthful of human bone grease
>gag reflex projectile vomit all over prof's door

Kek
Ty user
You don't ever worry that you smell like the stuff you work with? I work in a chemistry lab and I get paranoid that I might smell like the nasty things I work with right after, it really impairs my ability to socialise sometimes

Physics lab Electricity and magnetism
Magnetic fields
Looked up the specifics, we had a copper rod which carried 10A. So I went around telling everyone that 7mA is a fatal dosage. So everybody was super scared of touching the thing.
After a while I started laughing really hard, touched the rod and everybody was like huh, why aren't you dead?
Oh yea right, if there's any current going through me, it's incredibly little due to resistances.
First year students can be so gullible..

> dissecting frogs in high school
> teacher goes into equipment room
> comes out with Kermit the Frog puppet
> starts going around with him looking at us all upset, trying to make us feel guilty

user, if you smell like a chem lab after leaving it, you have much bigger problems to deal with than giving off an offensive odor

I gotta admit, the drosophila lab was surreal.

Here we are, mass breeding these larvae, sorting them into group based on physical appearance, then literally making it a goal to rip their heads off with their glans from their "neck" intact. To them I'm just some giant merciless killing machine and they will never understand why. Even if they had the ability to comprehend the environment they were in and what I look like, they would still never get it. It really puts the rest of the world into perspective.

>First week of classes
>Freshmen are doing their safety training for general chemistry lab
>One of their tasks is to learn where the safety shower is
>Some moron goes to the lab a floor above the gen chem lab (to be fair they have very similar room names)
>Sets off the safety shower in our research lab
>Everything's flooded
>Research lab has a "danger! keep out" sign to ward off any other freshmen.

How can people at this school be so smart, and yet so so dumb?

That sounds hilarious tho

if that's true, it's pretty sad.
biology teachers should encourage scientific research, and animal tests are a necessary part of that. anyone who tells you differently will never have done research on anything medical and should be regarded as a hippy.

Try antibiotic tests: we give an organism the perfect place to grow and develop, give them the perfect temperature, and after a while just zyklon B the fuckers. we kill them again and again, repeating the process until one of them grows immune to it.

> anyone who tells you differently will never have done research
well he's a high school teacher so that's fairly obvious

I think it's a metaphor for life.

>The same assburger loses her mind because cheap Chinese plastic tubes melt in the PCR device
I would start crying too, that's a fucking nightmare.

My poor samples :(

Holy fuck

This is a high school lab story, from senior year.

>Be taking Forensics as an elective, doing cool lab shit all year with my friend
>We get to soil analysis near the end of the semester
>Friend/lab partner is sitting in classroom part of the room, copying someone's English homework
>I figure she'll be here in a minute, so I get to work. By the end of the class she still hasn't even come to the lab station
>Next day I'm a bit annoyed
>She does the same thing
>Almost finished with the lab when she finally comes over and demands to copy my data sheet
>I am clearly annoyed when I tell her that I'm only letting her copy it because she wouldn't be able to do it in the time we have left to finish the lab
>Finish up, go back to classroom section of room
>Apologize for being rude, tell her that when I was in grade school people would do that all the time nd it pissed me off to no end
>She responds by telling me I'm not intelligent at all
>Says that I can't be if I'm dating someone of my gf's intelligence, says gf has the intelligence that gf's parakeet has
>Finished by saying that I'm dating my gf to take advantage of her

I wanted to knock the bitch the fuck out

>"b-but why? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?"
>"..."

Shit, I'm shooting to be a virologist right now but I really need to work on my shaky hands

>Doing independent study with ochem professor while taking the class
>Synthesizing drug compounds so we can analyze their UV spectra
>Spend ~6 hours on spring break running the sample through a column
>Fast forward a few weeks to crystalization of the product
>Refluxing the product, decide to leave it while we go to ochem lab since the product is incredibly stable
>We both leave and come back
>Round bottom flask shattered while we were gone since the metal cooled and contracted
>"Oh I was afraid this would happen"
>"I got bad news user, you're gonna have to run the column again"
>mfw she waits 10 seconds and says "hahaha I'm only kidding"

>Animal physiology lab
>Geography students also participating for their teacher degree

>professor hands me some Cerium mineral thing and tells me to purify it
>go though instructions perfectly
>the product looks like come grey-black goo and not at all like anything vaguely metallic
>get ridiculously anxious
>rare earths are expensive
>head down to professor's office with goo
>force out an "I...sorry..." while holding up my work
>professor laughs and says "oh? I must've given you the wrong sample"

>all this retarded shit
why is this person even enrolled in university? my gut says the student and school get money from DEM PROGRAMS but at what point do we really need to ask 'is there no standard anymore?'

Naw. It was a pretty funny joke. We didn't really feel guilty. We laughed. He also was giving us good instruction. He just took a break to pull that prank.

fucking kek that's hilarious

>High school physics lab
Experimenting with transformers
Labmate switches primary and secondary coils and connects it directly to mains when the teacher is away, 2300V sets the table on fire
>Chemistry lab
Using pure sodium to test reactivity of different metals to water
A guy thinks it's a good idea to collect the created hydrogen gas, fills up a small test tube with it and lights it on fire. Obviously the glass shatters, sending small glass pieces all over his face. Luckily he had safety glasses

I can't believe the first story

This thread is making me want to pick up every field mentioned

I know many biologists who specialize in physiology just because they need less math.

"I'd rather torture and kill thousands of animals than learn basic algebra, calculus and statistics"

please tell me you took a tissue sample from the supermouse to find out what made it so badass

>Phys Chem
>Some kintetics lab shit
>guy spills silver chloride all over his hands
>his hands are just grey for weeks, good times

>Basic chemistry lab
>One guy spills sulfuric acid on his pants
>Lab teacher asks if he's ok
>He says he spilt just some water and tries to finish the lab asap
>After 20 mins screaming in pain and runs to the shower

Tbh, I did that aswell in highschool, the light hydrogen thing. The lab assistant thought it was funny to scare the teacher, it just made a high pitched bang.

>Mammalogy lab
>Alright class lets stuff some mice
>Start by carefully peeling off the skin from the body, being especially careful around the eyes
>Accidentally cut one of the eye sockets too big, shit
>When I go to flip the skin inside out to stuff it, one of the legs gets trapped
>Professor uses my mouse to show how to insert the wire into the tail and ends up breaking my tail too
>Stuffing gets messed up and he ends up kinda lumpy
>Mouse comes out as having one big eye, three legs, a broken fucked up tail, and a hump
>Lovingly name him Eyegore

I remember being in a plant bio class my sophmore year at uni that was a pre med requirement for some fucking reason. We had these giant old halogen lamps testing how different light sources affected C4 and CAM cycles in plants (i.e. busy work) and while sitting there watching these green bastards soak up the light, I absent mindedly touched the metal tip of my pen to a small bit of exposed wire. was a very loud pop, poof of smoke and the whole lab lost power. We got out early, shit was cash.

needless to say it was quite a shock

kek what was the molarity

0.5 M

That's a normal Test for hydrogen, normaly the testtube shouldn't shatter

wew it really was water then

I remember when we had to disect pig eyes we only got rounded scissors and tweezers because scalpels were to dangerous .
Good hell ist much more dangerous when you put your whole bodyweight on that scissor to get atleast a starting hole in that eye

Needless ti say the eye wasn't nice disect afterwards

Dissection with childsafe scissors and tweezers? What?

That's still a pH of 0. Which is strongly acidic. And if you just let it sit there on your skin to do its job, even a much lower concentration will be dangerous.

Was that uni or high school?

>Plant cell culture lab
>Partner doesn't know how to calculate concentrations
>I start doing the calculations for her
>She goes away and starts making the growth media all by herself
>I tell her to wait, doesn't listen
>She tells teacher we're ready, and we have to plant the plant embryos in the ruined media
>After 3 weeks
>Everyone else have beautiful shoots
>We have only one rotten embryo + a nice variety of molds

>Animal physiology lab
>Each student has to cut the vagus nerve from a pigeon
>All pigeons died next day
kek

high

Ugh this convention of capital M really peeved me at secondary school, considering the teacher never said it actually meant 'moles per liter' and just pronounced it 'moles'

I was convinced that the bottle contained x moles from the time it was filled.

>had black lab
>got pupper cancer
>ded

rip pupper :(

Stupidass units frustrate me. There is absolutely no need for a special name for mol/L. Just fucking write mol/L and don't give us another bullshit term to memorize, as if we don't have enough in chemistry/biology/whatever you're studying.

THIS

The teachers fucking took it for granted that we know what M is while it was never explained, its name was wrongly used and nobody had been told that we would be using it instead of mol/L.

Yeah, it sucks. But it's fast to write.

It's less effort and everyone knows what it means anyway.
What really bothers me is this obsession with mass percentages when you don't need it

please tell me you have a photo of this

it's way easier to write and those who need to use it already know what it means

This so much. In school I hated stuff like group projects because it always ended up with me being the only one actually doing anything. Now in Uni I've found people who actually care about the subject and are willing to work, it's so much more rewarding.

...

It would if it were a liter bottle

As somebody who used to smoke heavily, no.

It's pretty classic mistake, but my lab partner forgot to balance the centrifuge.

My dad use to work for a natural gas company and had a friend who worked where they add the smell to natural gas.

One day he was walking through a hardware store, when he noticed everyone starting to panic and evacuate. He talked to a manager, who told them they had a gas leak. He sighed and informed him it was just his clothes.

>pick up my stuff and go to give results to prof
>start chewing on my pen and get a mouthful of human bone grease

I never fucking got this. How can people be so fucking oblivious to filthy tools and surfaces? What's the point of washing your hands and everything if you're going to pick up a nasty noteblock and pen right away?

>organic synthesis course
>have to do individual syntheses but encouraged to work in teams
>team up with a chill but lazy stonerish type
>first synthesis is a bromination
>while pouring the bromine in his dripping funnel, he fucks uo completely and gets it all over the palm of his glove
>tell him he should probably take the glove off and wash his hands
>"nah it's cool dude"

He got a massive first degree burn

The Skellingtons strike again!

Reminds me of this story, quite similar.

You and me both. Much easier to operate on a person than something that does not understand why you are causing pain.

I once noticed my lab's freezer containing over 2 years of PCR products (my professor liked to keep every product until a paper with its data was published) that stopped working. Was on a weekend, too, so if we didn't get everything to another freezer quick, the samples may have gotten shoddy.

I also accidentally lit something on fire in Ochem 1 lab, but it was all in the hood and decently contained. That lab was fun.

Rats are so adorable too. They're like miniature dogs.

Mice are fucking bastards though. They try to bite all the time.

This. I joined a Neurology Lab a undergraduate. I did a lot of research as a pure organic chemist, but I was getting more interested in biomedical science so I joined the lab.

My first day I was assigned to a graduate student for her to show me around and because we would collaborate on our projects. Since we studied the optic nerve, I saw that some rats had like brain stimulators and rods, etc. I thought that was pretty cool. So I figured they keep the rats alive and do some tests like that.

We got our rats and she said we are going to give them "anesthesia." We did that and then I saw her rip off the tail and break the neck of the rat. It just didn't sit right with me and I didn't think I would be able to do that. I'd have no problem as a PI, but not as an assistant doing the grunt work. (Even though I liked grunt work in chemistry)

To clearify, I worked during that time for a couple years as a CNA in a stroke / palliative care ICU and a chemotherapy hospital. I'm now entering 4th year med student going into a surgical specialty, so it's not like I can't handle it. But man, that one experience ruined it for me. I resigned from the lab a couple days later.

I got my first part-time teaching job in comparative animal physiology lab. The objective was to measure action potentials produced by cockroach leg mechanoreceptors.

The first cockroaches were too old and useless. Couldn't measure anyhing but noise from their legs. Had to run to the animal room on the other side of the uni, and get some fresh cockroaches.

Once catching enough roaches for the course, I ran back, but tripped over. About 20 roaches escaped and caused some havoc among students.

This one's obligatory (pic related)

Holy fuck I'm dying here, post pic now

>work for a chem company
>mfw some retard new hire starts mouth pipetting
>mfw he's pipetting 12 molar HCl
>mfw he does it again with 15 molar H2SO4
>mfw he still isn't dead and it's been a month and I've told him that he's going to die if he doesn't stop
>MFUCKINGFW he told me that's how the old chemists did and if it was good enough for them it's good enough for him

>final lab in o-chem is identification of an unknown
>making some derivatives to identify my unknown by melting point; by this point I know it's a carboxylic acid
>lab book gives a procedure for using SOCl2 to make an acid chloride and then using it to make amide derivatives
>made my acid chloride and heated it gently with my reagent to make the derivative, exactly as written
>the next step was to put it in a sep funnel and wash it with water

I don't know if this was a joke by the author or what, but the reaction that occurred the moment I added the water was so violent that even after 5-10 minutes there was no way to safely do the extraction. That didn't stop me from trying, though. The gas buildup blew out the stopper in the time between ventings (literally about two seconds) and that shit went all over my hands. Thank goodness for gloves.

Fuck that textbook. I still don't know what I could have done differently.

>>MFUCKINGFW he told me that's how the old chemists did and if it was good enough for them it's good enough for him
Your pic is also mfw reading that line. Strive to be as uneducated as scientists were in the past.

That's a retarded textbook, everyone who's taken high school chemistry knows you add acid to water, not the other way around.

>everyone who's taken high school chemistry knows you add acid to water, not the other way around.
Fucking memes man. This is an old wive's tale. It's bullshit. If you pour fast enough, or there is sufficient heat, or too little container volume, or whatever else the problem may be, it does not matter which substance is poured into which. Don't blindly accept rules with only anecdotal evidence.

You're dumb.
Do you know anything about kinetics and chemical thermodynamics?
Do you seriously believe the order is what matters? How retarded are you?

Wait till you see concentrations with the unit N.

Nobody explained what it was, but it was suddenly used in a lab course. At first we thought someone misspelled M. Till someone actually asked the TA.

>taking 6 hours to run a column
>yfw you complain in a few years about not being able to find a job

Normality is very useful, if you know what the solution is for.

Some fools actually use letter N when they mean mol/l.

>Some fools actually use letter N when they mean mol/l.
The unit of N is mol/l with a coefficient.

i read this comment before
wtf

>Physics class
>teacher whips out the ol' CBR's
>lab partners start laughing to themselves
>Tell me they are going to make a dick shaped graph
>Spend entire class playing with CBR trying to make a prefect dick
>Running up and down hallways as fast as we can
>Build a penis shaped course with boxes
>Finally make a quality shlong
>realize we wasted an entire class and everyone is ready to leave
We were supposed to follow a generated graph to the best of our abilities and copy it into our log books
>Out of time so we copy the dick into our books
>Leave books on teacher's table and leave

Got a good grade?

Theses experiments are why I hate physics, it's boring, and never comes close to what the actual theory says it feels like you are debunking it instead of confirming and then you just go with it which makes the experiment a little retarded and again it is boring as fuck.

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