Anti-Newtonian lab

Now that Beaker and I have officially intoduced our blog, I thought I would make my first individual post. I am the blogging chemist known as Bunsen, and I'm a female graduate student doing my PhD in organic chemistry. We have decided not to reveal our identities just yet in case this whole blogging thing turns out to be a complete disaster.

Well, here's my first lab story. I live on level 5 of the chemistry building, in one of the organic research laboratories. Some of the boys in my research group have been pulling apart dead hard drives, and removing the magnets. The magnets that come out of these hard drives are super strong.

This has led to two main observations:

1) Magnets are cool
2) They are even cooler if you can find something else magnetic to stick them to.

We had many many hours of fun sticking two magnets together and trying to pull them apart (this is really hard! They are some strong magnets!) When this got old, we took to using the magnets in more inventive ways. For example, one such evil lab mate of mine stuck a piece of my hair between two magnets, and then proceeded to stick my magnetic piece of hair to a lab stool. Being temporarily attached to a lab stool turned out to be pretty amusing, and so I didn't yell at said evil lab mate. I can get quite angry at times :-)

The discovery that followed is the basis for many hours of fun in the lab. Some genius discovered that the air conditioning vent that runs just below the ceiling in our lab is magnetic. We had magnets, and the ceiling was just waiting for some action. At first we just threw the magnets up and laughed when they got stuck to the vent. Then we took to sticky taping the magnets to random lab objects and then throwing these objects up. Now there is all manner of crap on the air conditioning vent. It may sound stupid, but seeing an empty chemical bottle/water container/random stuffed animals get thrown up in the air, and never come down is really hilarious! Who knew!

I thought it was necessary to share this discovery with everyone: What goes up doesn't always come down :-)

Bunsen