Question: have you ever done a dangerous experiment that went wrong

Steven Gardner answered on 18 Jun 2013:

Luckily no. About the worst thing I’ve done is accidently poured chloroform into a plastic container. As well as being famous as something that will put you to sleep, chloroform is also a brilliant solvent. It’s so brilliant at dissolving stuff that it will actually dissolve plastics. I had forgotten this right up until I came back a few hours later to find what I can only describe as a puddle of plastic. The chloroform had dissolved the container and then evaporated, leaving the bottom of the fume hood (so glad I used a fume hood!) covered in a thin film of hard plastic, and my cornea sample were plastified too. Oops!

About the only other dangerous thing I work with is propylene oxide. That another fantastic solvent, in fact it’s so good it will dissolve your gloves and get through your skin, and it’ll take anything on your skin with it (so writing on your hand is a bad idea!). Fortunately I haven’t had any accidents with that yet.