Friday, April 10, 2009

always use protection

I was unpacking the day's Aldrich order, and I was amused and irritated by the onion like layers packing materials. These two 100 mL bottles of DCE were packages thusly: box, packing foam, mylar (sealed), box, packing foam, can, padding, pp or pe bag (sealed), bottle. That's 9 sweet layers of protection of various, and redundant, types. The packed product was about 8 cubic feet to contain just over 12 cubic inches of chemical or approximately 99.9% filler. I feel so safe now!

7 comments:

Jim said...

At least it didn't show up as a 1L bottle in a box inside a 100 gal. steal drum on a crate like we got the other month.

scientist 1 said...

That's awesome!

person 1 said...

This reminds me of one of Magnus's best stories. An undergrad working in the lab was waiting on bromine to come from aldrich to do the first step of his synthesis, which was oddly enough a bromination. The package came and Phil entered the lab to check on the new student's progress. In his reaction was his substrate, dissolved in the appropriate solvent, with vermiculite floating in there. Apparently, the undergrad assumed that bromine was a solid styrofoam like substance.

Unknown said...

http://picasaweb.google.com/BMichaelOKeefe/LabShenanigans?authkey=Gv1sRgCKHctIDHgKzDUw&feat=directlink

Unknown said...

sorry i suck at HTML

scientist 1 said...

That was even more awesome than I had hoped it would be.

The Jim/reagent combo really makes the set.

Ben said...

We get the other end. Fort Collins has a major freight line dissecting it. Since I have been here I have seen dozens of train tanker cars filled with the following materials: Chlorine, Iron tetracarbonyl, sulfur, sulfuric acid, benzene, "polychloro" benzene, liquid methane, dimethyl sulfide, dichloroethylene, nitromethane, and many more. All separated from the 250K+ populous by 1/8th of an inch of steel.