do not unplug that fridge

February 13, 2008 at 5:38 pm | | everyday science, hardware

You can tell that someone had an unfortunate day when they opened the fridge and found all their samples ruined:

fridge-sign1.JPG fridge-sign2.JPG fridge-sign3.JPG

Who would unplug a fridge, anyway? Ridiculous. I think it was the people putting a new ventilation system in the room, a few years ago.

(My camera has been broken for the last few months. Now that it’s fixed, I hope to post more photos!)

10 Comments »

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  1. I would, just to see it die.

    Comment by kendall — February 13, 2008 #

  2. Recently, the lab next door to ours was being renovated. The people doing the construction decided to cut off the nitrogen one day, without warning. Nitrogen is something you miss when it isn’t there. :(

    Comment by psi*psi — February 13, 2008 #

  3. It is not necessary to unplug to ruin the contents. A “scientific” refrigerator simply has its electrical system isolated from flammables. There is no rule against a frost-free freezer. If one stores a pint of peroxycarbonate initiator in said freezer well below maximum recommended temp, periodic warmings will accumulate autocatalytic muck. Boom.

    If it is important to keep it on, have your electrician hardwire the power cord to the socket. Have a battery-powered screamer monitor that connection. It won’t prevent the stooopid from succeeding, but if the socket goes cold it will transfer liability when lawyers descend.

    Comment by Uncle Al — February 14, 2008 #

  4. The person who unplugged the fridge is probably the same person who decided to shut off the argon tank to our stills after using it – you know, just to be nice. Bear in mind this was the day after we setup the THF still, so in the morning I am greeted with not the nice deep blue color of the benzophenone sodium keytyl radical, but pale yellow/brown ugliness.

    Tomorrow that same person will probably go and shut off the water to your condenser, then take all of a certain chemical and not tell you but put back the empty bottle, then use your rotovap and leave the bump trap completely coated with their crap…

    Comment by bink — February 14, 2008 #

  5. Crazy glue often succeeds where words do fail.

    Comment by Axicon — February 15, 2008 #

  6. We had one PI who decided to be environmentally friendly by unplugging electrical equipment over the Christmas campus shutdown.
    Somehow, he managed to unplug a small -20 freezer under the bench. It belonged to another PI, and contained “Very Important RNA Samples” (i.e. irreplacable) in it.

    To this day, the two PIs don’t talk much to each other.

    Comment by Lou — February 22, 2008 #

  7. Is that fridge in your lab, Sam? It looks vaguely familiar to me.

    We were told earlier this week that the power was going to be shut off in our building on Saturday for 12 HOURS for some construction BS. That’s really helpful when you have lots of incubators, shakers, and -80 freezers, and there aren’t enough extension cords to attach them all to the backup power. I suggested using the recruits that are visiting this weekend to shake the cells. None of this free food crap – show them what grad school is really like. :) As it ends up they were forced to postpone the shutdown though.

    Comment by Mary — February 26, 2008 #

  8. hi mary. nice blog. will you cook for me?

    Comment by sam — February 26, 2008 #

  9. Sam, I’ll make you a deal — I’ll cook for you if you’ll make me some hydrolyzable ATP-DCDHF. :-)

    Comment by Mary — February 27, 2008 #

  10. If it is important to keep it on, have your electrician hardwire the power cord to the socket. Have a battery-powered screamer monitor that connection. It won’t prevent the stooopid from succeeding, but if the socket goes cold it will transfer liability when lawyers descend.

    Comment by Alexa — July 19, 2009 #

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