The always entertaining Ambulance Driver posts about laying a most righteous smackdown. Go. Read.
It reminded me of one of the funnier incidents when I taught Biochemistry as a graduate student. Teaching the Biochemistry for non-Biochemistry major course and attendant laboratory exercises was a rite of passage for new graduate students. Not much older than the students we were teaching (and in quite a few instances, not even that), we were tasked with instilling the basic tenets of Biochem into those that were not Biochem majors.
For the most part, it was an enjoyable endeavor. I always tried to use everyday analogies to get concepts across to the, um, less technical members of the group - one of my favorites was explaining the importance of properly balancing the centrifuge by asking what happens in the clothes washer when you put three pairs of jeans on one side and one pair of socks on the other. Pretty much everyone knows what happens. Then I extrapolate it to the high-speed centrifuge:
"Yeah, but in this case, when it comes unbalanced it does more than just shake and wobble across the room. It launches that 15 pound rotor through the steel lid and the concrete wall next to it."
Got the message across.
Anyhoo...
We're doing a lab exercise on peroxidases and their effect on reactions. One of my students comes up to me, highly distraught. While pipetting material out of one test tube into another, she inadvertently broke the test tube, cutting herself in the process. Her concern was not so much the superficial cut, but that the chemicals in the tube had splashed on her open wound. She was frantic, in a near panic.
She was afraid that the chemical, H2O2, was poisonous or otherwise detrimental to her health.
I explained to her that H2O2 was more commonly known as hydrogen peroxide, and had been used for eons to prevent infections in wounds.
As soon as I said the words "hydrogen peroxide", the look on her face changed to a "I can't believe I just did that" kinda look...
And yeah, she was a nursing major...
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2 comments:
Jay,
At least she wasn't working with the highly toxic compound known as dihydrogen oxide.
Wow.
Nursing major had been in the class the whole time, and during a stunt involving Hydrogen Peroxide she didn't know it was Hydrogen Peroxide.
Now THAT'S funny.
tweaker
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