Question: Have you ever blown something up accidentally?

Carolyn Nielsen answered on 17 Nov 2015:

Fortunately, no!

You have to be very careful in lab though and follow the instructions for safe use of all chemicals. My profile picture is actually of me taking immune cell samples out of the liquid nitrogen where we store them long-term. This is about -179°C (so very very cold and good for storage) but of course nitrogen is a gas at room temperature- it’s the gas that makes up the majority of air. So it’s really important to use sealed tubes to store the samples in, because if liquid nitrogen seeps in they will explode at room temperature because the nitrogen will expand a huge amount as it warms up and turns from liquid to a gas.