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Asked by jeff247 to Josh on 18 Jun 2013.
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Josh Makepeace answered on 18 Jun 2013:
Hey jeff247! Thanks for the question, though now I have to admit that yes, I have accidentaly had a (small) explosion. Quite a while ago, I was clearing up some old samples in the lab, when I accidentaly squirted some water onto a lump of sodium (I didn’t realise it was there).
Now if you haven’t seen sodium react with water, this is the kind of thing that happens!
Now, thankfully it was in a fume cupboard, so nothing bad happened, but there were some big flames! It was a good reminder of how reactive some of our materials are.
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Comments
jeff247 commented on :
what was your reaction
Josh commented on :
Thankfully, I realised what was about to happen, and isolated the reaction from the rest of the lab, and let our safety equipment do its job! Luckily all my safety training kicked in!
Serena commented on :
Ah – I have been in the lab when someone has done something similar, Josh!
Jeff247 – before any of us ever start working in the laboratory, we all take some safety training. That includes fire safety and how to correctly use a fire extinguisher. When I worked in the US, we had to put out a small controlled fire in a bucket outdoors to practice.
Stuart commented on :
Unfortunately yes!
We use a chemical called ‘Piranha solution’ to clean our glassware – it’s a mix of hydrogen peroxide (once used for rocket fuel!) and concentrated sulphuric acid, it’s nasty stuff! One of the solvents we also use to clean glassware is called acetone. If you mix acetone with piranha solution, it explodes… In my early days I accidentally didn’t empty the acetone out of a flask before tipping the piranha in, resulting in an immediate explosion! Fortunately, it was pretty small and didn’t break the flask, but it was a pretty frightening lesson to learn!