MSG, Thujone, P and I found ourselves jostling with a number of other fellow scientists in a biology lab that was closing down yesterday. All of us trying to find the best free stuff in their unfortunate lab. We came back with a mighty haul. After frantically scrambling over each other to get at the goodies (constantly wary of the Sodium azide jar complete with cracked lid) we raked in a large number of chemicals that were either in new packets, running low in our lab, or were known to cost a pretty penny.
Unfortunately, we missed out on the small Uranium sample that was up for grabs by mere seconds (this remains a sore point with Thujone). However, a number of cadmium compounds, some silver nitrate, a fresh 2.5L bottle of chloroform among other things, made up well over $2,000 worth of chemicals. The best part of all of it is that the lab was (as I mentioned previously) a biological one and I feel quite satisfied knowing I made them pay through the nose for once. And they provided me with a new 300W lamp for the lab which should be good for some of my photo-initiated reactions.
Take that Biology!
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I've taken part in decomissioning a few labs, or been in the right place at the rigt time when other labs have been having a cleanout (it seems a trait of new managers to want to 'clean up' by throwing thousands of $$$ of stuff out, just because it hasn't been used in a while) Upside to all this is that I have quite a collection of nice glassware at home. :)
ReplyDeleteYou've gotta love getting lab treasures.
The amount of nasty stuff they had just sitting on a shelf (not in a cabinet) was astonishing: cadmium salts, sodium azide to name two!
ReplyDeleteWe scored about 20x 50mL good quality sep funnels, 4 new boxes of borosilicate scintillation vials, liquid nitrogen dewar... soo awesome
I never even considered taking the glassware home.... Damnz
ReplyDeleteIt's funny some of the groups dont even bother calling in people to go through their stuff and throw out a heaps of cool glassware. I went through a skip once to find about 40 quick fit test tubes that i got the glassblowers to make into RBFs,
ReplyDeletecondensors and a gazillion conical flasks etc.
Prize grabs include brand new gas tight syringes, balances, thousands of clean test tubes, Carbon tetrachloride, you name it.