Bouncing Back

When Dr. Saunders decided I'd learned enough to start, I set up the apparatus in the fume hood of the small lab. I had three hours to run the reaction before dinner. I measured magnesium metal filings into a round flask, half-filled with ether containing one of the chemicals I needed. The flask neck was plugged with a condenser, a glass tube open at both ends, and sealed within another glass tube. Water ran through a hose from the tap into the outer tube and back out through another hose into the drain of the sink. The water cooled the inner tube so that any ether fumes that boiled up would run back into the flask, keeping them from becoming a serious fire hazard. I turned on the tap water to a medium flow and added the second chemical, drop by drop, to the solution in the flask. After forty-five minutes of watching the slow drip, I got restless. Nothing seemed to be happening. I counted the drops: one every fifteen seconds. “How long is this going to take?” I asked myself. I opened the valve so the drops came every five seconds. I had visions of sitting there well into the evening, watching the drops fall into the ether. I thought of the homework I needed to do and I even began to yearn for the dining-hall dishes like chipped beef on toast or beans with cut-up hotdogs. Missing dinner entirely would be pretty painful, especially at the end of the month when I couldn't even afford to go out for a hamburger. I picked up the flask and shook it to see if anything would happen. Nothing. Just the same slightly yellow ether solution with some bits of magnesium in it. I took the flask out of the ice bath I'd put it in and removed the stopper. Sticking a glass rod into the flask, I scraped the magnesium along the bottom to try to activate it. By now about a third of the chloride reagent had been added, and that meant trouble. If the reaction didn’t start pretty soon, when it did start there’d be so much reagent that it would go too fast and heat up. Tiny bubbles began to form in the chilled flask, and I immediately put the condenser back in and returned the flask to the ice bath. More and more bubbles appeared. They got bigger. In a few seconds the ether was boiling furiously. The ice bath didn’t seem to make a difference. I could see that the ether was so hot that while some was condensing, fumes were pouring out of the top of the tube. Any elecrical spark could ignite a room filled with ether fumes. A flash of panic hit me, but I pushed it aside as I tried to think of what to do. The most rational response would probably have been to call the fire department and then run like hell, but instead I grabbed the condenser and pulled it and the stopper out of the top of the flask, then poured the hot reaction mix down the drain. I dumped the ice bath on top of it and turned on the tap full blast. Since the reaction was quenched by water, that turned out to be a good idea. In less than a minute the ether fumes stopped rising from the drain, and as the tap continued to run, I was sure that the danger was over. I stood there looking at the flask in the sink, my hands shaking and my breath coming fast. “What the hell is going on in here, buddy?” a voice thundered. I jumped and turned around. Dr. Saunders was standing rigid in the door of the little lab, staring at the water pouring off the lab bench onto the floor. His fists were clenched and his face was red with a mix of anger and shock. I realized that when I’d pulled the condenser out of the flask, the end of the rubber tubing that drained into the sink had popped off and now the water that had been running through the condenser was running all over the lab bench. I jumped for the faucet and turned it off. “The reaction got away and I almost had a fire,” I told my boss. “I managed to quench it by pouring the mix down the drain. I’ll clean up the water.” His fists clenched even tighter at the word “fire” and then relaxed slightly when he heard it hadn't occurred. My heart, beating like a jazz drummer at the finale, slowed just a little as I saw his face relax—the anger at how I’d screwed up and fear that a major lab accident was happening gradually changed to relief that I’d figured out what to do about it. Having the fire department called to his lab would have been a complete disaster. He started to say something more, then just shook his head and walked away.