Yes, that seems to be a recurring theme with lab intruments

Robots? Seriously? We don't have any of them. The closest we have is the robotic arm on the HPLC-DAD autosampler (one of the few things I'm not scared of).

Ultracentrifuges are bad; when you think of the speed that heavy rotor is spinning at (need an smiley for nerves)

What is your 6000quid instrument, Tricky?

he he...once I split some liquid nitrogen on the corridor. It rolled along the floor and under the door of the estates office...whereupon it disappeared in a puff of mist (as it does). I can still remeber the amazed look on the estate bloke's face as he opened the door and looked up and down the corridor, where of course nothing was amiss cos all the nitrogen had evaporated by then.

Maybe that's where the runours of ghosts in the building began

Our liquid nitrogen tank makes a horrible squealing noise when you turn the tap on. I'm always worried about freezing my feet cos the floor fills up with cold mist. Mind you it's fun to impress undergrads with.

One for the science people: how long did it take before you were no longer intimidated by using sophisticated (and therefore expensive) lab equipment?

I have a turbulent relationship with a recalcitrant LC-Mass Spec. It still makes me jump every time it makes a noise (and these machines make a lot of noise, which isn't doing my nerves any good)

Chocolate (from Hotel Chocolat: best chocolate shop ever). Always reliable.

I'm not even a Dr and I still get stuff adressed to Dr Juno (chromatographic companies are the biggest culprits)

Thanks Insomniac; quite interesting. Strangely it put me in mind of Chinese language with their ideopgrams or pictograms or whatever they're called; quite a similar concept to phonics? Or maybe I misunderstood it (quite likely)

The teachers at my primary school were quite critical of my mother for teaching me to read before I went to school; but I don't understand why. It was a massive help being able to read at a young age. There seems to be an argument about that still: teachers want to introduce some form of
phonetic reading, or something, and don't want parents "interfering" in that by teaching kids to read before school.

Don't know, but there should be. We could write one

I find myself in the unprecendented situation of agreeing with Golfpro

Piglet, you sound a lot like me: went from a promising start to an extended period of rebellion. I blame it on my Catholic education