A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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I'm dying chat.
Credit: An anonymous labrat friend. Thank you.
You know, I used to do this as a teenager, when cleaning my bearings with acetone, and I recall my family needing to get the sink repaired due to leakages getting quite severe at times.
Only through this post have I come to realise, 20 years later, that I was most likely at fault for the issue.
I mean I'm still not going to admit it to anyone, but it's good to know and stuff.
At least you know why your sinks continue to melt now
Except admitting it to 50,000 lemmy users, haha. No worries, I didn't know acetone ruins pvc until this post either.
Your secret is safe with us Jaden
Context: acetone will dissolve ABS plastic. Drain pipes can be made out of ABS.
The pipes are usually made of PVC. Several other components are still often made of ABS.
In my experience, household drain pipes are usually made out of PVC.
True. I corrected the statement.
I mean, PVC pipes are even more vulnerable to acetone than ABS ones, so I would've made a different correction (broadening the statement rather than narrowing it).
That's just the natural aging process. Plumbing just gets saggy and wrinkly. Ask any man over 50.
Y'all have a sink in your fume hood? We just had waste bottles.
Cup sinks in fume hoods used to be more common, but as a lab planner they are pretty rare requests nowadays. If I had to guess, it's probably to do with the move away from central acid-waste neutralization systems towards procedural controls dictating neutralization/dilution prior to disposal.
Wait, industry is moving away from central neutralization? My wife is the facilities manager for an R1 engineering department and they commissioned a building two years ago with a central acid collection tank -_-
It varies from place to place, but the trend is away from them. I recently did a basis-of-design study for another R1 institution, and they said in no uncertain terms that they wanted to decommission the existing central system in their circa-1990 lab tower. Facilities departments often find them to be a PITA to manage and maintain, versus just requiring researchers to neutralize their acid waste before putting it down the sink, or collecting other hazardous waste to be taken away by a service
A lab planner! That's one of those cool (sounding at least) jobs that are obvious when you think about it but I've just never thought about it.
Definitely piqued my curiosity though. How much of your work is designing new labs vs retrofitting existing ones, how much travel is involved / how much area do you cover (the question there is really about how many labs exist needing such services), and what are any weird or surprising elements of your job?!
It's a niche specialization within architecture, and while I enjoy it it's not quite as cool as it sounds. Labs tend to be designed to a common template around the standard lab bench depth (30") and accepted safe aisle width between 66" and 72". Most of the fun is in equipment planning, and that's only exciting for a certain sort of Excel jockey 😅
Lab planning is a small enough niche that you really only find us in firms with a national or international reach, and so I'm more often working on projects several states away from me than anything in my own backyard. Travel varies, but other than initial meetings it tends to be hands-off job, so much so that I'm actually a 100% remote worker apart from when I'm on-site for a project kickoff or a site survey.
As for unusual or surprising parts of the job, I have really enjoyed working with some of the PI's I've fitted labs out for. The best has to be a chemist operating a biofuels testing lab, who regaled us with tales of all the times he'd blown up some glassware or singed off his eyebrows in the lab! I was a bit worried for his safety practices, though...
Ah interesting, I think for some reason I assumed it'd be more of an administrative career path offshoot for someone working in chemistry, but architecture does make more sense. And I know how you feel, I started my career in industrial controls because the idea of working at the interface between invisible electrical black magic and moving valves, motors, and other machinery seemed real cool.
Quickly learned that in that world, creativity and innovation are treated more like liabilities than anything else lol, and rightly so. There's a few great, proven ways to do most things, and rarely is it wise or fruitful to develop novel approaches over one of the proven solutions. I wouldn't want to be a chemist in a lab toting multiple new designs, lol.
I found it stifling, but could've tolerated it a lot better if the majority were WFH like yours!
A lot of ours has sinks, this wasn't at mine though. :)
I spent a bunch of time in art classes and learned more practical chemical safety and disposal than my actual chemistry classes.
Best way to get rid of acetone is what my boss made me and a co-worker do once:
Toss it onto some metal plates that had been left in 110 degree weather. They were also painted black.
Did you know that's enough for acetone to flash-light? We didn't until that moment, then we had fun
sounds like they need to a~~ce~~tone for their sins
This is so irresponsible, everyone knows you pour it out outside.
into the gravel filled used oil pit?
Finally, an educated person up to date on the latest in popular science.
My favorite overheard undergrad story:
I was walking past the lecture hall right after an organic chemistry midterm, and there was a cluster of 4-5 students talking about the exam. One asked about question 8b, and another one said "you're not supposed to mix nitric acid and ethanol, that makes TNT, right?" I had to stifle a chuckle as I walked by.
So close, and yet so far! Nitrated acetone is explosive, and TNT (trinitrotoluene) is also made with nitric acid, but toluene is a much more complex molecule than acetone. If those undergrads could figure out how to turn acetone into TNT efficiently, they'd get a Nobel!
If those undergrads could figure out how to turn acetone into TNT...
I fondly remember my organic chemistry lab professor giving us all a lecture that was something like this:
"I see that you children have learned how good acetone is at cleaning glassware. And you are correct: it is excellent. However, you cannot pour it down the sink and we have to pay for hazardous waste disposal. So use soap, water, and elbow grease instead."
Smelling it untill it's totally evaporated. Even if I much prefer isopropyl alcohol.
What is the proper disposal method?
Wick it with some paper towels and let it evaporate.
Acetone evaporates quickly. You just let it sit for a minute and it'll dispose of itself
so just inhale it all... ok
Yeah, I don't work in a lab, but if I clean something in the shop with Acetone, I leave the rag to dry on the side of the trash can. If I think it's a lot, I'll put it outside to evaporate or burn it.
I did a couple of times pour acetone down the drain but I did run water at full blast at the same time to wash it down immediately. Guess Im slightly smarter then undergrads.
the ol' dilute down the chute
EHS would raise hell if they caught us putting waste solvent in anything but a hazardous waste container...
Insane motherfuckers: "Pour the acetone in my mouth!"
Whichever one has the post polystyrene in it, right?
I fought hard to get a solvent extractor at my work. 11k paid for it's self in no time and almost no chemical disposal fees.
How else am I supposed to get rid of the agar huh?