The Perils of Inorganic Labs

So, as many second year chemists will know, Ferrocene is a lovely orange powder that smells of diesel.

It looks something like this:

However, two of my associates managed to.. not.. make.. this.
I will of course protect their identities so I shall simply refer to them as "Paul Brooks" and "Mike O'Connell"

In a lab manual, when it says "wash with 2×25ml 2M HCl", you should probably listen to the manual and do that. "Paul" and "Mike" didn't.. The resulting separating funnel–based explosion could be seen from space.

Do bear in mind that the entire fume hood looked like the above picture, but "Paul" and "Mike" are both men of short stature and so couldnt reach the roof to clean it.

Returning to what ferrocene should look like.. See those lovely orange crystals I showed you above? (Which were infact prepared by a master chemist..)

This is what "Paul" and "Mike" managed to salvage from their experiment:

Nice Work Boys!

Edit: Have since been informed by Jon Rourke that this blue stuff is Ferrocinium! So that's a positive result. Har har.

: 03 Mar 2006 01:31 |  Comments (4) |  Report a problem