Lab Do's and Don'ts

Lab Do's:
Experiments
Talking to Grad students
Fun
Smelling disgusting organic solvents

Lab Don'ts
1) Don't spill chloroform on the rubber gloves that you are wearing...it reacts with the rubber and gives off heat(if you do spill it on your gloves, don't leave your gloves on for 5 min like I did)

2) Try not to do reactions involving Sulfur....S-CH3 exchanged for a Br smells like rotten eggs x 20 ...I'm not even exaggerating...it smelled so bad we had to go on another floor to do our reaction just so that our lab group won't hate us for the rest of the month.

3) Don't forget what you learned in Ochem lab....when doing a reflux, the incoming water goes in the bottom of the cooling vessel and comes out the top, not the other way around....lets just say that I had a little mishap in the lab today

4) Don't pour your product into a column before the silica gel has settled completely. You will get a very crooked column and some of your product will come out at the same time as some byproducts.