Pack Rat Tendencies

[Ron]

I got the idea for this from a thread on the LC/MS and GC/MS section of the form. We all know lab people hate to throw anything away, it might be useful someday. Most people have found bad cables, saturated filters, bad columns, thermal paper from an integrator that was replaced 10 years ago, and so on. All that is fairly common. What have you found in the lab that is truly weird, wonderful, or dangerous? My favorite find was a sensing element from a figher plane altimeter.

[adeputy]

Picric Acid Solid in an amber bottle from manufacturer which used a cork stopper to seal the bottle.

[Jackus]

Approximately 250 grams of potassium cyanide inside shelf with hardware.

[lmh]

Hey, Ron, don't throw away that thermal paper. It's really good for detecting HPLC leaks!

My favourite was an apple II computer, found 3 years ago. It seemed a crime against history to dispose of it, and it was administratively tricky too: there was much worry about what information it might have had stored on its hard drive...

I personally still have bags and bags of dead lamps and piston seals removed from hplc's during routine service. You never know, they might come in handy.

[Peter Apps]

I even collect other people's "junk", and now I am reaping the benefits. In my GC at the moment I have a home made cryo-trap constructed using a chunk of aluminium from the base late of a plate reader, a piece of 1/4 inch stainless pipe that used to be an HPLC column, a chunk of brass from the front panel of an OLD GC, a cylindrical ceramic heater out of a whole box of heater elements that someone else was throwing out, some thermocouple wire that I got from somewhere, a temperature control unit that has belonged to four different laboratories and is more than 20 years old, a stainless steel base-plate that I bought at an auction, and a housing made from an aluminium dry wall edging strip. It does have some new things in it as well, but when you operate far from major centres you have to make do with what you have to hand.

Peter

[Eric Moore]

How about this: an old, burned-out deuterium lamp inside a box labeled "deuterium lamp - doesn't work."

EM

[DR]

Some old random machined parts from dead instruments - mostly nuts, bolts, heat sinks (these come in handy when a PC fan dies as long as you have some thermal paste).

I've also got an old vacuum glass dewar, an old 1st generation Pentium chip (left over from a PC upgrade) and a few well worn clamps etc. (will come in handy if I ever put up a rack to hold model parts or fish tank plumbing...).

[Bruce Hamilton]

Where to start, where to start... ( these are in my lab or home basement )

Waters Prep 500LC with fabric pump drive wheel that has been shattered by overpressure - the RI detector may be useful, but the valve electronics could be an issue...
A large drawer full of chart recorder pens and bottles of ink.
Three HP 3390 integrators with gooey rubber drive belts. Still have supplies of thermal paper for them and the HP 5880 GC.
Three large natural gas calorimeters with beautiful verdigris-coated filigree copper coils - must clean up sometime....
A long brass Fortin barometer with several kg of Hg to recharge it.
A narrow-necked, corked, heavy ceramic bottle used for transporting mercury.
Hand-engraved Hg-in-glass thermometers in Fahrenheit ( NZ changed to Celsius in 1960s , science facilities in 1950s)
Assorted coal gas bunsen burners - NZ switched to natural gas in 1960s.
1 meter long ceramic tubes from a Carbon-Sulphur analyser that came from the 1930s - complex glassware and the heavy glow-rod furnace tossed out last year.
Huge number of Whitworth, AF, USFine, USCoarse nuts and bolts with appropriate hardware for installing...
An amber 250 gram bottle of "The British Drug Houses Ltd" Sodium Hydrogen Citrate ( Disodium ) that is unopened, and has a cork covered with waxed brown paper and tied with string that is sealed into the wax.
Lots of glassware of weird and wonderful sizes and purpose.
Black Baird and Tatlock shaker that has an eccentric weight on a motor shaft, walks across the floor faster than it shook flasks.

And that's before I reach the storeroom, but after a major cleanout...

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[Uwe Neue]

Well, I am cleaning out my office because I am moving into a new office. I found many old things, such as a 1966 research contract with progress reports about the development of polymer packings for aqueous GPC, or the 1973 announcement of the introduction of microBondapak C18, as well as prototype Radial-Pak cartridges (I am sure the younger audience will ask "what's that?").

[TimB]

I found a Wates 2410 RI detector with a broken casing on a shelf in a store room... It still turns on, and I hope it still works. I plan on talking to the service rep about it when he comes to do the PM.

[WK]

I've got many an old lamp stored away!
I've also got an HP 33E programmable calculator.
Should really be on display at the Science museum!
It needs a power adaptor to get it running!
Some old TLC paraphenalia and a micrometer.
Company magazines are a good laugh - pictures of cricket teams
from 20 years ago - boy we all had hair then and some dodgy moustaches!
What happened to slide-rules?
Check out the old Atari games adverts with Morecambe and Wise on youtube (UK chromatographers only).
US chromatographers can check out Morecambe and Wise's spoof of credits to Starsky and Hutch on youtube - hommage indeed !!

[Uwe Neue]

Hey, I have a mechanical calcualtor at home. I still used for approximations in a P-Chem class. We were turning the handle for a day to get the results we needed.

[Consumer Products Guy]

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....

[chemwipe]

Awesome!

[lmh]

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.