chemistry party tricks

Happy Holidays, everyone!

It being the time of year of visiting friends and family, I've been giving quite a few tours of the lab. I've developed a standard repertoire of gimmicks and tricks to entertain my guests, including playing with liquid nitrogen/dry ice, melting glass pipettes with our butane torch, letting them put their hands in the glove box[1] and dressing them up with glasses, lab coat and gloves.



(not my lab, just a random one on flickr. My lab is a lot more dingy and messy.)

I've discovered a new trick that seems to go over pretty well: cleaning their glasses for them with our sonicator! It works really well, and they can watch a big plume of oils and dirt come off their lenses as the waves do their magic.

What do you do to entertain visitors to your lab? Bonus points if there are pictures involved.

[1] This one is always a bit of a let down. Glove boxes are way less cool and way more uncomfortably sweaty than they appear.