Will I explode the lab?

[rlbennet at acd1.byu.edu]

aloisia schmid wrote:
> Except that
> when the PI whose apparatus I normally borrow saw all of this, he said,
> "Are you MAD?  You could have blown us all to kingdom come!  That stuff
> 'll kill ya'!"
> 
>         Unfortunately, I didn't save the four kind responses, so I thought
> i would ask about this, especially since my boss just saw the bunsen
> burner and the goggles and the crucible with molten sodium nitrite in it
> and asked another post-doc in the lab what this was all for, and since the
> inevtiable "she almost blew us up" came into the conversation, I thought
> it might not be a bad move to ask this more pressing q uestion, "Am I
> really risking the lab and its assorted personel by sharpening my tungsten
> needles this way?"
> 
>         I guess the real question is, will I cease and desist even if it
> turns out to be true?  It was awfully fun!
> 
> 
> Alice Schmid
> 
> --
> Aloisia Schmid
> Howard Huges Medical Institute/Morrill Hall
> University of Illinois
> 505 S. Goodwin Ave, 618 Morrill Hall
> Urbana, IL 61801
> Email: A-schmi at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu

To be honest I do not know if in reallity there is a possibility that 
it could blow up, but having made a more than a few tungston needles 
that way I don't thank so.  One thing though, watch the temperature of 
the Molten Sodium Nitrite.  When it is too hot you don't get good 
needles, You don't want the tungston to be glowing all that much.  

If anyone could blow up a lab with molten sodium Nitrite it would be 
me, and I couldn't, so you should be safe.

Randy