Stupid Science Tricks

You know a blog post is going to be good when there's a phrase like this: "The beaker had ruptured and the hot acid had ignited a roll of tissue paper." Sciencebase's David Bradley blogs about "stupid things people have done in the lab," relying on colleagues and readers to offer up their own embarrassing stories. One researcher reported, "I came back from holiday to find that new PhD students had helpfully washed all the laboratory plasticware, but unfortunately had then used a ‘drying’ oven to dry and needless to say produced a molten mass of plastic." Another scientist "revealed how her gel to nitrocellulose transfers improved no end when she learned that she needed to put them between the electrodes, not on top." There are several great anecdotes here, so check out the full post.