Pack Rat Tendencies

[AICMM]

lmh,

knicked, that's one of those English phrases for stolen, right? Regarding slide rules, HGF - high geek factor (of which, I admit, I have.)

Best regards.

[Consumer Products Guy]

what happened to slide-rules? Yes, just what I'd like to know. Mine's disappeared. Which is not fair, because the reason I keep it is that it doesn't get nicked like the calculators do.

I still have my two plastic ones. I'm not stating that I really remember how to use them.

[chromatographer1]

That picric acid is quite explosive if not in a wet state.

VERY EXPLOSIVE !

Call the authorities and get a bomb squad or explosives disposal team to remove the dry picric acid. If not kept wet or dissolved state any vibration can set it off.

keeping fingers crossed,

Rodney George
consultant

[HW Mueller]

Rodney, we used picric acid extensively as students, never had the feeling that it was wet, if I remeber correctly we weighed the amount needed, not 100% sure on this anymore, though. Thus I certainly would appreciate seeing a trustworthy ref. on this. Also I do not have in memory that even TNT is difficult to handle.

[krickos]

Hi

Agree that the picric acid needs watching though also made it at the university.

It is like inclined the long term stability thats the issue, not if you store it for a short time in plastic/glassware for further synthesis, preferbly wet. Sublimes overtime and gets really dangerous especially if in contact with metal residues or bottles.

TNT is a completly different issue, have been "tossing about" 25kg bags of flaked TNT in the military, blowing up roads etc, you can even melt it and mould it to hand granedes etc relatively safely (DO NOT try this at home ). If flakes are pressed into "rods" etc it gets more sensative though.

[HW Mueller]

A trustworthy ref. to a refereed paper?

(Also, picric acid subliminng??)

[gcguy]

Many years ago we had a fair stock of picric acid and it had gone "crusty" round the lids. One of the more senior analysts on site decided to get rid of it by opening up the jars under a running tap and then washing away to drain. Two minutes into the job there was a huge bang and he staggered out of the smoke clound with a really bad gash just to the side of his eye. His safety glasses had been blown off in the blast!!!
Fifteen stiches later he was still faced with the problem of gwtting rid of the jars. I never did find out what happened to the rest of the jars, I was trying to avoid being roped in to help.

GCguy

[lmh]

AICMM, yes, "nicked" is english for stolen. But I also had a strategy of keeping 2 calculators, so if I lost one, I could just wait for someone to bring it back while using the other (instead of hunting around for it). This was fine until both went missing. I lived with slide-rule and paper for a day or two, before asking around. My co-worker merely looked up gloomily and said "Yes, I taped it to the ceiling". And sure enough, there it was: attached just above my head. There never was any explanation.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm not popular. Paranoia this way...

[krickos]

Hi HW

Are a bunch of MSDSs out there I think but here is one summary:

Nice background history with some references in the end:
http://www.cci.ca.gov/Reference/PICRIC.pdf

Unsure how thrustworthy all sources are

As for the subliming, it is said to be slow when it is on its own at room temperature, but did not find a good reference on that, if you google/search a bit there are a couple of kintetic reaction studies done in the 1960s of reactions with piric acid in solid state for instance but frankly not knowledge enough to interprete kinetic studies in detail a bit beside my field.
However there enough observations/warnings (MSDSs etc) of piric acid crystal at rims of jars made that I find it plausible.

[Ron]

I suspect the reason that there are not more picric acid problems is that the acid is usually wet enough to be stable. It is amazing how much moisture there can be in a powdered or crystalline substance that looks dry. I also found a pound of picric acid on the store room shelf while organizing things while an undergraduate lab assistant.

[Stryder08]

- found a 10 year old bottle of perchloric acid
- found a rusted container containing blowfish toxin, was 15 years old
- found a rusted container containing anemone toxin, was 12 years old
- found a rusted container containing black mamba toxin, was 18 years old
- found a rusted container containing black widow toxin, was 15 years old
- found a 13 year old 8L bag of whole blood
- found a 17 year old brick of cocaine in storage

[Uwe Neue]

I am wondering, if the toxins are not toxic any more, while the whole blood may have turned toxic after such a long storage time. However, I will not volunteer as the guinea pig...

[Don_Hilton]

Picric acid:

When I worked in a previous position we had to go watch a safety film each year. One year the topic included laboratory hazards. As they started to talk about picric acid my reaction was “yawn.â€

[HW Mueller]

Whew, we must have had some protecting angels in the labs. Don´t remember too many crystalls of any type on any jar, etc., though.

[bisnettrj2]

My calculator, I use this every day.


The on-off switch broke about 2 years ago, and I had this toggle switch lying around, and a file folder plastic tab had a nice tint....

Someone beat me to submitting this calculator to the "There, I Fixed It" website....

http://thereifixedit.com/2010/03/16/epi ... /#comments

I would be there are many a chromatographer that could submit some 'kludgy' fix to one of their instruments to that site, but only a very few of us might appreciate the efforts put into the makeshift-fix...