Being "Part of Things"

During my intern years, there was one guy - KC - who really had it figured out.

He treated everyone professionally, asked after sick wives or kids off to college, and always helped people out of a jam. He spoke softly, but radiated a warm confidence that instilled trust.

He was also the Departmental Director.

I remember walking in really early one summer morning, catching him at his hood. At the time, he had about 20 people working on his program; he didn't have to run reactions or take spectra anymore. 

Full of naïveté, I asked him "Hey, what are you doing in here? You pay people for this!"

He smiled, and said "I just love being in lab. It's the only way I feel like I'm really part of things."

It's been many years, but I still remember how his face lit up as he said that. 
Someday, I want to be more like KC.

Chemistry 'Rules of Acquisition'

Pardon me while I nerd out for a moment...

"Rule 74: Knowledge equals profit"
Source: Paramount

One of the more popular characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was Quark, the scheming Ferengi bartender who set up shady deals and forever vexed station security. To support Quark's M.O. the show's producers compiled a tongue-in-cheek set of Ferengi business tenets called the "Rules of Acquisition" (recall that these same producers once invented a language for ST:TNG).

Now, although the lab atmosphere purportedly promotes cooperation and teamwork, those of us who've staunchly guarded a favorite piece of glassware or equipment might beg to differ. I therefore suggest an (admittedly incomplete) set of Lab Rules of Acquisition**

1. Everyone writes their own dissertation.
2. If I wash your flask, it's going in my drawer.
3. Keep your friends close, and your stir bars closer.
4. Using 'group intermediates' saves you the trouble!
5. Rotovaps are fair game.
6. Always 'repurpose' others' old NMR tubes.
7. Become best friends with the lab manager - they have all the best supplies.
8. Never turn down free lunch.
9. Authorship = currency.
10. When all else fails, blame the intern.

*Readers: Have more suggestions? Feel free to comment, and I'll add them into the mix!
**P.S. For those with a literal streak, this is clearly satire. Labmates who behave this way end up in hot water.

The Simpsons: Just Like "Cooking"

Ever have that feeling like you somehow missed the boat? 

Back in 2011, TV sitcom stalwart The Simpsons aired Episode #491 (NABF20), entitled "The Food Wife." I caught it in reruns for the first time tonight. Aside from the hilarious send-ups of celebrity chefs and uptown foodies, the episode turned a truly dark corner when it compared molecular gastronomy to...cooking methamphetamine. 

Really, it's true - Gothamist and Esquire both scribed pieces about the show last year.

Credit: Simpsons Wikia | 20th Century Fox

Breaking Bad gives its swan song later this year. We know Walter and Jesse's lab work has truly permeated pop culture when references pop up on prime time comedy cartoon shows.

And how often do you get to see Homer Simpson stumble around a garage lab*? Priceless.

*(Even one that doesn't make any practical sense; are those goofy cones supposed to be filters? And why do TV writers always think we connect reflux retorts with 'mad scientist'-esque glass tubing?)

Dirty Hood = Good Hood

Ever worked in a completely new chemical fume hood?

I have. Actually, due to moves and new facility construction, I've been (lucky?) to have three completely new hoods - hoods devoid of any smells, stains, or funny noises. All still had working baffles, legible installation labels, functioning flow meters, and bright white walls.

I ruined them all.

Chemjobber's latest post, referring to a "stinky walk-in hood," along with Pauling's lab notebooks got me thinking: How many times have I had to strip everything out of my hood, and start from scratch? I counted at least three; each one occurring in a beautiful, unsullied space.

In graduate school, I set up a sodium-mediated halogen exchange / rearrangement a few weeks after our move. After carefully flame-drying the apparatus, I greased and clamped all the joints, and set it to heat in an oil bath. I lowered the hood, and walked the ten feet or so to my desk...boom! We had a motley crew of older hot plates that didn't always heat up like you'd hope. Best I could piece together, there was an autoinitiation, followed by a massive exotherm I hadn't observed on smaller scale. Best part? After splattering my hood with compound, the flying glass cracked the oil bath, and little pieces of flaming sodium rained down around the pool of oil forming below my stir plate. Good times.
Total cleanup time: 3 days

As a postdoc, I had the "honor" of installing my own monkey bars, manifold, and otherwise arranging my virgin hood exactly as I pleased. Fast forward about a year, when I decided that a fairly exothermic borohydride reduction would go much better with a solid addition funnel. I'd covered all my bases - passive N2, massive cooling bath, flame-dried everything, the works! Except for one tiny variable: the borohydride particle size was too fine for the funnel's Teflon screw. One turn led to accidental addition of about half the reactant. Upon solution contact, the sudden gas release blew backwards into the solid addition funnel, which commenced to shoot a fine dust of borohydride onto every hood surface, including my arms.
Total cleanup time: 2 days

Later into my career, I had another heated reaction fail in stupendous fashion. The compound, a gummy orange solid, coated every surface of my hood: behind the sash, inside the light ballast, up the baffles, even down into the storage cabinets underneath. When I was finally done with that cleanup, my lab coat had been stained so thoroughly orange that we just bagged it and sent it out as waste.
Total cleanup time: 2 days

Look, all of these incidents would have been much worse if my sash had been up, or if I hadn't been wearing correct PPE when they occurred. We think about fume hoods as big vacuum boxes, but they're also great for containment of runaway reactions.

Readers: I know I'm not alone. Have a spectacular story of a reaction gone wrong? Share it in the comments.

Help for a Filmmaker - What's Your Lab Like?

Good evening, chemists everywhere! I've recently received an email from a gentleman interested in writing screenplays about organic chemists (Finally! What took so long???)

I've extracted a few of his remarks, below.

"...I'm an independent filmmaker currently working on the first draft of a screenplay. The story is essentially about two pharmaceutical researchers...I could easily invent what I imagine the laboratory environment is like, but I think [I'm] simply rehashing tired stereotypes." 

"What I want is a level of realism that respects the science and presents it in an honest way...I have a couple of questions about life in the lab (do you listen to music, what are supervisors like?, etc)."

(Like any good pharmaceutical researcher, I'm looking to 'outsource' my answer to all of you!)

Ideas? Comments? Anyone want to describe their lab environs? Any cool things you'd always wished would be on camera - bright neon-orange crystals, towers of foam, metallic mirrors? Have any fun scientific toys? (flow reactors, robots, lasers...).

I hope to collect your responses, along with my own, and toss the whole bundle his way. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

See you in Hollywood! (or at least direct-to-DVD...)