One ordinary lab day in the Fall of 2024, I desperately needed a multi-necked round bottom flask for a reaction. I strolled about the lab and scoured for the piece I needed in each oven we had. The glassware was too small, too big, or had too few necks. After many minutes, I finally found my flask... by a recently used sink. For the average person, they might think: "Just wipe off the water?" or "go ahead and use it, it's fine :p." In the field of organic chemistry, water present on any level (atmospheric too) will almost always RUIN any hopes and dreams of a successful reaction. You have a water-sensitive product? It will degrade in the air before you can purify it. Your reagents will hydrolyze in the air? Without a sealed inert atmosphere, the reaction will never initiate to begin with.
With no luck of magically finding a similar but dry round bottom, I cleaned and dried the only found piece per lab procuedure. I cheerfuly went about rinsing it with acetone, soap and water, and subsequently acetone once more. Then, as if I'm saying goodbye to someone, I placed it in the oven and shut the door in its face. Per procedure, around a couple hours needed to be alloted for complete dryness. Knowing this full well, I yapped with a close friend for a bit before returning to my desk.
As the time ticked by, I wrote down yields, scavenged for literature reactions on SciFinder and analyzed proton NMRs. As I finish up my notebook work, I look up to only see its been about an hour (It really felt like 2 hours though). Typically time is not a concern, but as the day was ending and my friend was planning on departing from lab, I needed to get the reaction started. If I delayed until tomorrow, it will only push back my research to the weekend or beyond... Looking to find a quick solution, I walked over to the otherside of my lab and obtained a bunsen burner. I then fetched my partially dried round bottom flask and brought it over.
Assuming this will be a quick and easy glassware flaming, I began arranging the apparatus. The bunsen burner connects to a neoprene tube, and the tube attaches firmly to a gas inlet. My friend sat merely 10 meters away, and we began chatting some more during the process. With heat resistant gloves on and everything in place, I began the flame drying process. Unexpectedly, after supposedly turning on the propane line, nothing seemed to be igniting from a lighter I had. It was being held right above above where gas should be exiting from! I rapidly tried over and over again with no results. Thinking maybe not enough gas was being pushed through, I increased the flow rate by slightly turning the gas lever. Again, no ignition! Now hearing a loud rush of something from the tube, my friend and I looked at each other. I began to fear there was a gas leak somewhere in the tubbing and I quickly turned the lever in the opposite direction. Still, I heard this gurgling "rushing" sound...
WOOOOSSSSHHHHHHHH
A jet of water comes screaming out of the bunsen burner. It rises into the air like a fountain. Myself and the benchtop are sprayed with water, but thankfully none of it spalshes on any reagents. Confirming the "gas" lever, which turned out to be the water line, was still closed, I allowed the flow to quiet down and come to a halt. The flow continued but it began to linearly decrease. My friend, who was peacefully working away at her desk, witnessed the jet and came rushing over thereafter. She hurridly turned the lever completely to the opposite position (open again!), thinking it hadn't been closed yet since the water was still flowing... Suddenly, the bunsen burner, now a Bunsen FountainTM (pretty good name, right?) roared to life again and spewed even more water than before. The tubing then broke off from the inlet due to the immense water pressure. In a split second, our bodies were coated with a blast of water before the water line was finally shut off for good.
My friend and I looked at each other and began laughing hysterically in our damp lab coats. Tears were in our eyes; we couldn't believe what just occurred. I began to clean up the mess I had created. A true and obvious lesson was learned that day... Read your labels.