• Question: What is the worst thing that has occured during your time at the university of leeds? (so far)

    Asked by radderz97 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      I didn’t study there but went to a conference there when I was doing my PhD. I stayed up way too late every night having fun with the other scientists and fell asleep during the daytime lectures. My boss spotted me snoozing and was pretty unimpressed. Oops.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Just like Claire, I have also fallen asleep in a few lectures – not a good idea. I have had a few days when experiments have all gone wrong and I’ve broken some fairly expensive equipment but so far nothing too terrible.

      But last week a man in my lab was heating a reaction too much and it exploded. His arm caught fire and he had to go to the special burns unit at the hospital. That was pretty nasty and makes you realise that sometimes what we do is quite dangerous.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Ii’ve never studied, or really been to Leeds Uni and I’ve never seen an accident quite like Tom described (I hope the unlucky man is okay), but I’ve had a few minor scrapes in the lab. My worst moment in the lab was one Sunday during my PhD. I had spent a week making some samples and I came to the last step where I had to put them in a centrifuge. I forgot to check the settings on the centrifuge and all four tubes with samples in exploded in the machine. Thankfully the centrifuges we use are well armored, to catch exploding tubes. I lost all my samples and had to spend an hour cleaning the machine of my mess.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      I haven’t been to Leeds Uni either, but I’ve heard good things about it! Lots of minor bad things have happened to me in the lab. I’m fairly clumsy and have broken lots of glass in my time there. The most frustrating thing was a couple of weeks ago, when running some proteins I’d been making through a machine, they got send to the “waste” instead. I couldn’t get them back and so I lost about three weeks’ worth of work. I used some words I’m not proud of and then started again!

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      …. the worst thing that has happened to me while at university is nothing too crazy… just very smelly. As I accidentily spilled about a litre of waste on my desk. Luckily, there was nothing too nasty in there… but boy did it stink! My labmates weren’t too impressed!

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