• Question: Have you ever had an accident in a lab?

    Asked by miles888 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 17 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      hi miles888,

      I managed to make the PC I was working on explode once, The power supply died and a big flame came out of the back of it.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Not yet *touch wood* but there was a famous accident associated with the Super Kamiokande experiment (see my pictures on my profile). There are over 11,000 massive 50cm glass bulbs, electronics that act like inverse light bulbs turning light into electricity. They have a vacuum inside and when the tank was half full of water someone kicked one and it imploded. The shock wave went through the water and smashed half of the bulbs. This was very expensive because each bulb cost over $3000 each :s

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Mercifully not!

    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      a couple of months ago i was in charge of our accelerators for the night and the fire alarms went off. so i evacuated everyone, then went back in with our emergency response team. we found the accelerator hall filled with smoke. at this point i got a little concerned! eventually we tracked it down to a burnt out transmission belt – just like the cam belt in a car. it was attached to one of our cryogenic pumps. we just replaced it and no harm done. but for that moment i was worried it might be a fire.

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