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Fire in the lab!!! BE CAREFUL!!!! A Lesson learnt!

  
That day, we were working in our lab under laminar air flow chamber. we were streaking our plates with E.coli. For sterilizing the loop, we were using 70% ethanol. We also sterilized the L rod which we used for spreading , using the same Ethanol. 
One by one, we started streaking and spreading. I completed my turn, and sterilized the L rod by dipping in ethanol once and shown in flame, and placed it in a tray.Mam instructed, " Ethanol will catch fire , if you place the hot rod over it". One of my friend, did spreading after my turn, she too dipped the rod in ethanol, flamed the rod and instead of placing in the tray she misplaced the hot rod in the ethanol plate!!!! " oooo... fire fire..." immediately ethanol caught fire..!!! My friend who misplaced., she started crying... Mam shouted, " hey girls, guys run out of the lab...," as the tube which carries LPG for the flame was very close to fire. Suddenly, our lab technician acted smart & controlled the fire. One of our class guy commented " ae maapla coat-ah kalatti amaththi irukalaamladaa nee..!!!". At the end we ended the lab hour with a lesson of careful handling and loads of honey filled laughter!!!!

Love my fellow mates! Lucky to be a biotechky!!!
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Comments

  1. Anbarasu KJanuary 14, 2012 at 4:02 AM

    similar type of incident happened like this in our batch.... "the thumb rule before working in a laminar hood is to clean ur hand with spirit. One of my friend flooded his hands with spirit and exposed it directly into the flame, thats it...! his hands went into flames as like "GHOST RIDER"..then luckily we had water near by and finally succeeded in putting off the flame...! samma experience, that ull never get in any other dept..,!

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  2. Anbarasu KJanuary 14, 2012 at 4:02 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Kanmani RajanJanuary 14, 2012 at 6:25 AM

    Ya, lovely lab hours!!

    ReplyDelete

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