True Lab stories are everywhere, as Arcance Gazebo today features a story of new and interesting liquid nitrogen experiments:
Condensed matter labs such as ours receive frequent deliveries of liquid nitrogen in one- or two-hundred liter dewars. Unfortunately, most of the Berkeley cond-mat labs are in Birge Hall, which has no loading dock, so that the LN2 dewars arrive on the first floor of neighboring LeConte where they must be wheeled over to their destination by some low-seniority student. Since the Berkeley campus is on a hill, the loading dock at the back of the building is one floor higher than the other entrances to LeConte and all the entrances to Birge. One can push the dewar around the outside of LeConte, but a shorter route is to take the elevator down one floor and go out the side door.
Yesterday the LeConte elevator was out of order, which for most of us would have meant taking the long way around. However, one undergrad, tasked with transporting a full 230L dewar, simply decided to take the stairs.
He has pictures. Thankfully, no-one was hurt.
Uh, so… he kept his cool?
Wow. Just… Wow.
That is an impressive level of stupid.
What we have here is a future theorist….
You should not carry LN2 in a passenger elevator either. Maybe someone needs to address the root problem here before someone gets hurt.
http://tinyurl.com/o5ze6
From Oak Ridge
We had a similar incident at work a couple of years ago. We have to fill the dewars out on the loading dock and haul them into the building through a side door. Safety regulations require that we do this using the buddy system. Coming back with a full 180 L dewar, you need to make a 90 degree turn and get little of a running start to go over the door frame. My illustrious co-worker developed a little too much speed and when he turned in front of the door, the dewar tipped. And as he tried to hold on to it, it flung him over the tank and down the embankment at the side of the building. The “buddy” tried to hold on to him and the rest is history. Two people hurt and a dented dewar later, they added six inches to the sidewalk in front of the door, a guardrail and small ramp at the door.