"Acid into water...

...is doing what you ought-ter."

Very valuable chemistry saying. It's sort of like "i before e except after c" in that it keeps you from screwing up. Unfortunately, it appears as though some graduate students are unaware of this. But unlike the "i before e" saying, you don't just look stupid, you BLOW YOURSELF UP. And so was today's big happening here at Duquesne....

At just about 11:00 this morning, lots and lots of fire trucks flew up the hill outside of my window. "Some idiot burning a pop tart," I thought but then a few minutes later, even more firetrucks flew by, so I figured something was actually on fire. Oh noes! As it turns out, it was a minor lab accident, nothing to worry about, they were allowed back in the building after about 20 minutes. Or so we thought...

A little later when I was in genetics, we heard lots and lots of sirens AGAIN and after class we discovered all the lab people standing out on A-walk/clogging the Union since the building was now closed until further notice. Around back, there were lots of fire trucks and the lovely Hazmat team, not so happily suiting up to go contain our mess.

So by this point you may be wondering just what the "acid to water" saying has to do with a lab fire. Its quite simple, you see. Add acid to water, the heat of reaction is quite high but manageable. Do it the other way around, all hell breaks loose. Well, this is what our good friend on the 4th floor did. He was pouring a very concentrated acid into a new reagent bottle and it was a little moist. Tsk, tsk. There are air tanks for that! Anyways, concentrated acid + moist bottle = BAM! And fiery chaos ensued.