Re: connected sinks
The teacher used to stand a glass beaker of ether on a large watch glass of water. He then pumped air into the ether - which evaporated. The latent heat of vaporisation then caused the water to freeze. He didn't seem concerned about the amount of ether now in the air.
Doing organic chemistry in the VIth Form we saw what happens when ether vapour escapes over the side of a beaker. It rolled invisibly across the shared bench top - until it met a bunsen flame. Wooof! all the way back to its source.
One day someone overheated a beaker of either benzene or toluene. It caught fire and the air in the lab was filled with little black particles gradually dropping down.
A similar effect was caused on a sunny day when a pipe-smoking colleague discarded a partially unextinguished match into his waste bin - which was full of plastic coffee cups. As we had had a fire training session the previous week I knew what to do.
Grabbed the CO2 (not powder) extinguisher from the corridor. Remembered to remove the safety pin - pushed the nozzle close to the contents of the blazing bin - and pulled the trigger. Oops! the bin's contents were blasted into the air - fortunately the force also stopped the flames. The air was then filled with black oily smuts slowly falling onto every flat surface.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
