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"I handled a white sodium hydroxide tablet without gloves "

that must have been fun ... ouch ... well, I once created acetelyne gas without venting the tube right off ... the T.A. kinda freaked out ... hehe ... we made aspirin that semester but since it wasn't buffered, none of us had the guts (pun intended) to take any ...

did a similar thing with the benzene ... all freaked out (without gloves) I concentrated on not spilling it and got it RIGHT on my thumbnail ... I still freaked ... for no reason probably since it was the thumbnail ...

I enjoyed making nylon pulling it from the interface in the beaker ... that was kinda cool ... somebody in another section broke some thermometers and we had a mercury spill so they had to call in the guys in biohazard suits ... the lab was shut down for two weeks ... we all enjoyed the "break" provided by some unknown fellow classman ...

Dropping mercury process thermometers into steel tanks gave the same results, with the additional destruction of chemistry and putting equipment out of service for days.

Then there was the production manager who wanted to heat some tanks up faster than the heaters were doing it. So he took a propane torch to the outside of the tanks. No one told him the sides were metal over marine plywood, but he found out pretty soon.