You Have Been Warned

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Murphy's law, yeah?

It's not just a law. It's immutable universal fact.

So. I just spent seven hours in a laboratory. And Murphy's law was in full force.

My first reaction, making a Grignard reagent, didn't work. I added all the right chemicals. I did it all in the right order. My friend next to me, did exactly the same things.

And I got nothing. Just some magnesium turnings bubbling away happily in some diethyl ether. No colour change, no dissolution of the magnesium.

The useless helper guy advised me to just keep refluxing the mixture. Which I duly did. For a couple of hours. Only then did he suggest that maybe I needed to start again...

I feared lives would be lost at that point - but I persevered. I dried everything out in the oven. I started reaction again. It worked this time. I got a nasty looking brown solution with a few stray magnesium turnings floating around in it. Exactly as required.

The next step involved reacting said Grignard reagent with a chemical I had lovingly made on Tuesday. Believe me, this product was perfect. I had distilled it, then redistilled it. The infra red spectrum for the compound indicated it was almost completely pure - a rare occurence in organic chamistry.

So. I diluted said product (of which I had only 6g. The reaction called for 4.25g) with more diethyl ether.

Then dropped the conical flask and smashed it all over the bench...

Of course, given that diethyl ether boils at about 40C, I lost the lot. My product! My beautiful product!

I had to leave the lab to smoke about 1000 cigarettes at that point, before I hurt someone.

And now I have to write a report for last week's reaction.

Sometimes, my degree course really sucks.