<p>What do a college chemistry lab consist of? What kind of equipment do you have to wear?</p>
<p>There was a [thread=85778]similar thread[/thread] a couple of weeks ago that you might find useful to read.</p>
<p>That other thread has a lot of info from several people - thanks for giving that link.
I'm a 4th year chemistry major.. general chem labs were 3hrs per week.. and then my ochem & other upper devision chem labs became 3 hrs twice a week.
Regardless of what your school requires, you should ALWAYS wear goggles and nitrile (usually purple) gloves. It scares me that some schools don't require students to wear gloves, even when the stuff they are working with can cause horrible skin irritation or burns - and if the students don't wash thier hands after class, anything on thier hands can be spread to food and enter thier bodies by ingestion. Buy your own box of gloves if they don't provide them for you.</p>
<p>I think most schools just require a labcoat and googles. How much do the gloves help?</p>
<p>They protect your skin from the chemicals you're working with.</p>
<p>I'm surprised that not all schools require wearing gloves in the lab. In my high school, my teacher always made sure that everyone was wearing their aprons, googles (sometimes optional), and gloves for every experiment we did involving chemicals.</p>
<p>If you wear gloves, do you still have to wash your hands after the lab?</p>
<p>I think it'd be better if you did. Sure the gloves should have protected your hands from the chemicals, but a tiny bit might have gotten onto your hands when you took off the gloves or whatever. Besides, your hands are usually sweaty or powdery afterwards, so it feels nice to wash them.</p>
<p>How long should you wash your hands? Should you use soap? What if you didn't spill anything?</p>
<p>I don't know if there's any "official" guideline for washing your hands. I usually use soap and wash for a few minutes (Normally they say to scrub your hands with soap for about 20-30 seconds, then rinsing well to prevent the spread of bacteria). Keep in mind that I've only worked with the chemicals they allow in high schools; the chemicals in college are much more dangerous (so make sure you listen to your professor!).</p>
<p>Sing (silently to yourself) the happy birthday song twice. Also, a lot of people often forget to clean under the nails and between between fingers.</p>
<p>you have to wear space suits like the hazmat guys</p>
<p>nah, not really... probably just goggles will be enough.</p>
<p>If you didn't spill anything you definitely still need to wash your hands.</p>
<p>What would you do if you accidently spilled something? Ignore it or walk away?</p>
<p>Have you ever done a science lab?</p>
<p>If you accidentally spill something, then you immediately notify whoever is supervising you. Don't try to cover it up, or ignore it (definitely don't walk away and pretend it never happened!) because the chemical could be very harmful.</p>
<p>Would the chemical eventually dry up and be harmless? And would you lose points for accidents in lab?</p>
<p>l33twar10r, do whatever you want, it's your grade that will be affected, not anyone elses. i can tell that you're asking annoying questions just for the hell of it, but people are nice enough to respond to them kindly.</p>
<p>l33twArR10r, honestly, have you ever worked in a science lab? I'm a high school student, and I know all of these questions because they were covered by my teacher in grade 9<a href="maybe%20even%20earlier">/u</a></p>
<p>if you spill something.. just tell your ta running the lab. Most of the time it's something that can be soaked up in papertowls and thrown away, but there are several things that should never ever be put down the drain or trash can and need to be disposed of in a hazardous waste container. If you spill something and tell, you probably won't get marked off. But if the TA finds out you've been leaving a mess behind .. that's grounds for getting points off. You should always wash your hands in the bathroom after leaving the lab. Preferably with soapy water. You don't have to scrub long, but just make sure you get everywhere like under fingernails.</p>
<p>Goggles protect your eyes, a lab coat looks cool and sorta protects your arms and clothing, and gloves are the only way to really protect your hands where you are most likely to contact the chemical. Usually gloves and goggles are sufficient. No glove is 100% effective against everything. We actually have glove charts that tell you the effectiveness of the different glove materials against different chemicals so that you can best select your protection.</p>
<p>Well if you spilled HF aka hydrofluoric acid on your arm and didn't tell anyone and put your arm in the correct base to counteract the acid, well . . . let's just hope you don't like your bones always peskily supporting your muscles and nerves. The thing about HF is that it goes straight to your bones and switches the fluoride with your calcium. There are stories out there of people waking up with broken or dissolved bones.</p>
<p>That is one of the many dangers you may encounter in your lab. Sometimes our labs were so dangerous I was a little scared to go to class. But I got throught b/c I knew that as long as I took the proper precautions nothing should go wrong.</p>
<p>But if something does you have so many things to worry about: insanely strong acids (this isn't your high schools HCL or hydrogen peroxide that is .3 M at most) [I didn't even know they made molarities as high as I saw them in chem lab e.g. 19 M HCL, 48% HBr, that is the real **** people], extremely toxic fumes (the head lab guy said if we had any questions to go to his office outside the lab b/c he couldn't physically handle the fumes anymore on a couple of our labs after all of these years breathing them), very strong bases, explosions (apparently if we had any air gaps in our ionization columns they would explode), ovens, bunsen burners, and many other things to break, catch fire, or pour on yourself at any given moment.</p>
<p>The worst story I heard was my teacher telling us about a girl in her class that had a beaker of hydrogen sulfide (I think. I know it had sulfur in it, always bad news) and it broke in her hands. They immediately shut down the chem lab and she had permanent scarring. That's scary.</p>
<p>Always know the location of the showers, eye washes, fire extinguishers, fire blankets and any other safety materials. The BEST safety material, however, is CAUTION. And if you don't know what you are doing, don't guess...ASK.</p>
<p>HF is not a joke after reading this: <a href="http://ehs.unc.edu/pdf/HydrofluoricAcid.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://ehs.unc.edu/pdf/HydrofluoricAcid.pdf</a>, I see why someone would be scared to work in a Chem Lab.</p>