Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Wed, 01/13/2010 - 14:18
My Notes
Categories
Prerequisites
No Prerequisites
Corequisites
No Corequisites
Course Level
Upper Division/Graduate
Topics Covered
Physical methods / analytical techniques
Professional skills development
Subdiscipline
Coordination Chemistry
f-block Chemistry
Organometallic Chemistry
Professional Practices, Skills, and Resources
Description

This website is a video put out by UCLA and is a good general introduction to using pyrophorics.  It would be good for required viewing for ALL researchers who intend to use Grignards, alkyl metals, organometallics, LiH, etc.

Updated June 2015 to provide a new link; the old link no longer worked.

Learning Goals

After viewing this video, students will have a good  introduction to general methods for using pyrophoric materials.  The recommendations presented here MUST be discussed with a research advisor and made consistent with local practice.

Implementation Notes

The video starts out a bit cheesy, but the recommendations are very good.  I was (very) pleased to see that the recommendations I give to MY students are essentially identical to those presented here.

Time Required
12 minutes for viewing, more for discussing with others
Web Resources
Pyrophoric Liquid Safety Video (broken link june 2015)
Updated (june 2015) video link
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

I hesitate to suggest a lab practical here, but the way I will use this video is that I will have all students  who work with these materials watch it and discuss it with me.  Our students are required to have a signed procedure (signed by student and advisor) in their notebook before using pyrophorics.  I always stand right next to the student for the first time they do this procedure, and I make sure the student knows the risks and hazards and the procedure WELL before I let them use pyrophorics outside of MY presence (they must have a "buddy" present regardless).  

Creative Commons License
CC0
Betsy Jamieson / Smith College
I shared this link with the people in my dept. who use pyrophorics.  They were really excited to see this and think it will be a great resource for our students.  They are planning to use it both for students in our synthesis lab class as well as in research groups as something to view before going over the safety procedures with faculty.  
Tue, 01/19/2010 - 10:09 Permalink
Nick K / University of Michigan-Flint
It feels good when you have your research students watch a safety video and when you show them how to set something up for a reaction they say "wow thats just like they did it in that video you made us watch"
Wed, 04/13/2011 - 14:30 Permalink
samuelson / Indian Institute of Science

How do I gain access to this you tube video and the video below from Yale. Both are not available now.

Attempted access at 2-2-2015 (04:00 HRS GMT).

Thanks in advance

Sun, 02/01/2015 - 22:53 Permalink
Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College

Here is a link for a series of safety videos produced by UCLA:  http://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/safety-videos

And here is a link for a series of organolithium safety videos produced by Yale:  http://ehs.yale.edu/training/organolithium-compounds-training

I don't know if these are the same as the original videos, but it's likely that they are.  Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention!

 

Mon, 02/02/2015 - 12:02 Permalink