welcome to my lab! 

Me, working hard at crunching the numbers and plotting the trendlines.

I was so excited when we got to the soil texture triangle graph in my environmental science class. I love a good graph or figure.

Other figures I want to put on here:

• environmental cycle charts
  • rock
  • water
  • phosphorus
  • nitrogen
• periodic table of elements
• This should have been the first one I thought of, really. I'm always saying, "I need more periodic tables in my life!"
• a phase diagram or two
• some molecular geometries
• maybe a real-life pic of an instrument I use

I should also use this space to tell stories. In fact --

Tales from the Lab!

Safety Lessons

When I was an undergraduate, one of my resarch projects involved studying a flavonoid. I had difficulty dissolving it in ethanol, so I looked up to see what might work better.

       
Pyridine was among the solvents listed in the CRC Handbook. I checked our inventory of organic solvents and -- fantastic! We had plenty!

But I made the mistake of not looking up the Safety Data Sheet (SDS, formerly known as "Material Safety Data Sheets" or "MSDS") of the compound. So right there on the benchtop, outside of a hood, I prepared to pour the substance into a labeled beaker.

I opened the bottle and immediately got walloped by the smell of canned corn and fear. I mean, it hit the back of my sinus like canned corn does, and my whole body was filled with abject fear. I've often seen pyridine described as having a "nauseating, fish-like odour," but nothing of the smell reminded me of fish. I also didn't feel nauseated, though I could have if I'd kept the bottle open.

Instead, I closed the bottle and fortunately, the ventilation in the lab was great enough to dissipate the odour pretty quickly. To this day, I still associate dread, panic, and fear with the smell of pyridine. And I always open it under a functioning fume hood with the sash just high enough to get my arms in.