Department of professional gibberish

For some reason, I've always loved professional in-jokes that I don't understand:

The safety people always tell you that if you’ve used up one extinguisher and the fire still isn’t out, to head for the door rather than reach for a second one. That’s probably good advice (although I’ve seen it disregarded), and I’d advise you to take it. Actually, I’d advise you never to have that decision to make at all, but that’s not always up to you. You may be doing nothing but adding sodium sulfate to a bunch of dichloromethane today, but who knows? The guys next door might be gearing up for Trimethylaluminum Fiesta Days. You never can tell.

Trimethyaluminum fiesta days! Don't forget to try out the sports package!

Comments

That is hilarious.

Posted by jason | February 15, 2008 9:26 AM

For the non-chemists out there, trialkylaluminums (especially the trimethyl and triethyl varieties) are very pyrophoric. As a grad student, I frequently used triethylaluminum as a reagent in a dry box. One of the first times I did so, I brought a glass pipette, that had a small amount of the the liquid (less than 20 microliters) in the tip) out of the box into the open air, and it exploded with the sound of a rifle shot on contact with the moisture in the air.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 15, 2008 9:34 AM

From an article by Steve Martin:

I had the plumber joke, which was impossible to understand even for plumbers: "OK, I don't like to gear my material to the audience, but I'd like to make an exception, because I was told that there is a convention of plumbers in town this week—I understand about 30 of them came down to the show tonight—so before I came out, I worked up a joke especially for the plumbers. Those of you who aren't plumbers probably won't get this and won't think it's funny, but I think those of you who are plumbers will really enjoy this. This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench. Just then this little apprentice leaned over and said, 'You can't work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch wrench.' Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, 'The Langstrom seven-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.' Just then the little apprentice leaned over and says, 'It says sprocket, not socket!' [Worried pause.] "Were these plumbers supposed to be here this show?"

Posted by Craig Fratrik | February 15, 2008 9:58 AM

We had to evacuate once because a guy spilled tri-something-aluminum in his cubicle. He got in a lot of trouble, after he got out of the hospital.

The worst, though, was the klutz who decided he was going to make HT superconductors from Thallium. This was a guy who, after setting his lab on fire ran out of the room, turned the wrong way and threw all of the circuit breakers for my lab, leaving me in pitch darkness next to a burning room. Thankfully, the guy was not allowed the thallium. He's in real estate now. I figure he's at least 50% to blame for the mortgage crisis.

Posted by Njorl | February 15, 2008 10:57 AM

The closest I got to anything was in high school chem lab. We were allowed to do an extra project for extra credit, and a friend of mine used toluene to make plastic foam. He had some left over, and was adding it to some nitric acid when the chem teacher found out what was going on and carefully flushed it down the drain.

Posted by Rex | February 15, 2008 11:10 AM

I was a boring chem lab student; I followed the directions. A friend of mine, however, managed to melt a ceramic crucible. I think it was just an overabundance of magnesium but knowing him, there could have been just about anything in there.

Posted by anony-mouse | February 15, 2008 11:14 AM

Hexamine, HNO3, heating (instead of cooling). Ouch. I must have been either too smart for my 13 years or didn't have enough of the reagents... can't remember which ;-)

Of course back in college I heard about a guy who kept significant quantities of peroxyacetone in a jar under his bed. Fortunately I didn't have to price his life insurance.

Posted by ...Max... | February 15, 2008 11:58 AM

I knew someone with a long career in pyrotechnics in middle school. He made gunpowder, napalm, contact explosives (Nitrogen Triodide), etc. In high school he helped set up the chem lab, since it was a new high school. Found that metallic sodium made cool explosions when small pieces were flung into the mud puddles outside the building. It's a wonder I^H he survived.

Posted by ech | February 15, 2008 12:28 PM

The safety people always tell you that if you’ve used up one extinguisher and the fire still isn’t out, to head for the door rather than reach for a second one.

I once spent a summer at a plywood factory working the dryers, which were basically enormous 100-yard-long versions of the pizza ovens you see at restaurants: conveyor belts with heat sources inside.

There was a lot of wood about, and so naturally fires broke out. Every station had an assigned fire-fighting task, and according to the oldtimers, the fire department has been trying for 30 years to arrive before the fire was extinguished, and had never made it.

Anyway, my point is, the default emergency instruction, for newbies or anyone who was unsure of what to do in an emergency, was "Go to the scene of the fire and await instructions."

It's a bit of a different attitude than you normally see from the ordinary risk-management people.

Posted by Rob Lyman | February 15, 2008 12:30 PM

Megan, be glad that a trialkylaluminum fire is an abstraction for you. Be very glad.

Among fires I've put out, I once had to put out a carbon disulfide fire, which necessitated wearing breathing apparatus. Carbon disulfide is not only flammable as all hell (probably worse than gasoline), but also nastily neuro- and hepatotoxic (and that's not even considering the toxicity of the combustion products).

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 15, 2008 1:24 PM

HT superconductors out of thallium?!

What was that guy smoking, or do I even want to know?

(I did some research work on GICs made with mercury-thallium compounds. Yeah, they were superconducting, but certainly not HT.)

Posted by grumpy realist | February 15, 2008 1:27 PM

so, would this be a subtle experiment to see how many scigeeks read you everyday? :grin: I mean YancyW proved the point by using the term pyrophoric in a sentance. Heh, how drad is that?

Posted by SwissArmyD | February 15, 2008 1:34 PM

Grumpy, what do you think HT means? In the world of superconducting, high temperature is like, above 50K. Isn't the most top notch some exotic, 7 atom compound that is superconducting at something like 150K?

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 15, 2008 1:36 PM

"Isn't the most top notch some exotic, 7 atom compound that is superconducting at something like 150K?"

I remember hearing about mercury-thallium-barium-calcium-strontium-copper oxide and being reminded of the song about Elizabeth Taylor-Wilding-Todd-Burton-Burton-Warner. That was the pre-Fortenski days, which is good, because Fortenski just doesn't scan.

Posted by Njorl | February 15, 2008 1:54 PM

Uh... I left out Fisher and Hilton.

Posted by Njorl | February 15, 2008 2:31 PM

I remember in high school chem that our teacher was spending about 5 minutes a day explosively disposing of the 500g of pure sodium metal that the school had bought for some reason. The reason for getting rid of it is that we really couldn't store something like that safely. If there were a fire, the school's water based fire extinguishers would probably kill someone. For those who don't know, Na + H2O = NaOHx2 + O2 + BOOM. That is, water + sodium causes an explosion, as well as a a strong base. So, anyway, every day after class, she would put a little down the drain, with a small explosion. After about 2 months of this, she had finally gotten rid of it all. One of the new chem teachers noticed that we were out of sodium, and promptly ordered ANOTHER 500g.

Posted by Peter | February 15, 2008 4:06 PM

Na + H2O yields 1/2H2 + NaOH + heat, then H2 + 1/2O2 yields H2O + Boom.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 15, 2008 4:44 PM

Nuclear engineers tell jokes among themselves that are especially not appreciated by non-nuclear engineers. When you work intimately with dangerous materials, you develop a certain sense of humor that is not generally appreciated. As a result, our small talk about our work is often couched in generalities and euphamisms. When you are a government regulatory official, you have to be very careful how you use irony in describing the actions/foibles of nuclear power plant companies. The rule is to consider how it would sound on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times...

Posted by rxc | February 15, 2008 9:45 PM

So, anyway, every day after class, she would put a little down the drain, with a small explosion

She'd never heard of ethanol?

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 15, 2008 10:06 PM

Occam's Beard,

Hmmm, we routinely used CS2 as a weevil-cide in our flour barrel while living in Africa. Should we be worried? (I seem to be in fine health for my age, fwiw; no obvious neuro or liver problems.)

Posted by Kirk Parker | February 16, 2008 2:00 AM

Kirk, nah, besides, what's done is done.

But the fact that it kills weevils has got to tell you something.

I was talking about a room literally full of the stuff, not just getting a little whiff. I never found exactly what happened, but apparently a still or something bumped and spewed flaming CS2 all over the ceiling tiles. Unfortunately, my office was directly above. Smelling the SO2 from the combustion, and wondering what was going on, I came down to investigate to find half of the lab ceiling burning. After getting everyone out, I put on the respirator to put out the remaining pockets of fire. Most of the CS2 had burned itself out by then, fortunately, so the task was to make sure no other solvents caught fire.

I put on the respirator because I didn't want to be on the weevil plan. (g)

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 16, 2008 1:38 PM

You learn something new every day. The temperature of boiling water is enough to ignite carbon disulfide.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 16, 2008 11:43 PM

Oh, CS2 is vile stuff, all right. Poisonous, volatile, wildly flammable. It reeks, too. The thing is, it's actually a very good solvent for a lot of things, although it sure doesn't get used much these days.

I'm of the generation that just missed everyday use of benzene and carbon disulfide - benzene disappeared from the undergraduate lab curriculum after my freshman year, for example.

This is the sort of discussion I'm used to having on my own blog, not Megan's (!)

Posted by Derek Lowe | February 17, 2008 7:49 PM

Ah, we're training up a bunch of sissies! (g)

Benzene's nothing. When I did qualitative organic analysis we had the traditional separation of a mixture of acidic, basic, and neutral compounds.

The basic compound? Beta-naphthylamine! (True story.)

It was suggested we not get it on us because some people were beginning to suspect it might be harmful...

(For non cognoscenti: beta-naphthylamine is now right near the top of the ten least wanted list, a group 1 human carcinogen.)

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 18, 2008 1:12 PM