30 August 2003

I spent much of the morning searching the web for old artworks and photographs of chemistry and alchemy labs. This one is from the Southampton City College website in England. Hey, get those safety goggle on, kids! Okay, they probably never heard of goggles back then.

One of my students got some hydrochloric acid in her eye one day last spring. She had finished her lab, cleaned up her workbench, and stowed her goggles in her lab drawer, where they are supposed to be kept. She stopped at the sink to wash her hands one more time and another student, who was still cleaning his glassware, splashed some rather dilute acid and it hit her in the face. After 20 minutes in the eyewash, we sent her to the hospital, where she was treated by a doctor. She wore an eyepatch for a week, missed three days of work, and for the next month, treated her eye with ointment and took pain medicine for her constant headaches. It was a freak accident, of course, but aren't they all, for that matter? I'll certainly be talking about her mishap for the rest of my teaching career.

DWL