My Day in the Lab

Written for the Poem Per Day Challenge, Jan. 18th, 2005

Put the weighing pan on the balance
Be sure to tare it, Make no allowance,
Now carefully measure out just one gram
Of sodium perborate. "One gram," I said!

Next we start over and carefully weigh
MnO2 (Em En Oh 2) Out on to our plate,
One half gram of Manganese oxide,
Any more and the boss will have our hide.

Twenty-five ml’s (em ell’s) of DI (Dee I) water
We next pour into this chemical fodder
Drop in a stir bar and turn on the heat
To make this mixture a whole lot hotter.

Its oxygen we hope to generate
With these chemicals on our plate
Oh NO!!! I think I did something BAD!!!
Oh HELP! I finally blew up the lab!!!!!

Note: Having been a lab technician for 25+ years, I couldn’t resist writing this. It has been a while since I got to do any real chemistry. We are working on a really intersting project to find ways to generate extra oxygen on submarines. I always tease the Doc that one day I will blow up the lab. Well, so far so good. LOL. Cynaemon