Australia's Science Forum

I believe I read somewhere that it must be done once a year but it is recommended that it be done every 6 months.

Ours get done once a year. The company that installed them sends me a fax that says that reminds me and asks me for a date and time that suits me. Its quite convenient, really.

Mmmm. These rocks sound delicious.

When I did soil science at uni (closest I ever want to get to geology) they recommended we lick the soil to field test for salinity and texture (no joke) . It never tasted this good though!

Well all. I finally got a response from WorkSafe. For all you Victorians out there: this is all we have to do, and I quote: "As per the 2007 OH&S Regulations Part 4.1.7 MSDS's have to updated every five years. If you have an old MSDS for these products that is greater then five years old an...

Hey Lada, I'm the same as you (except I only have 1 prep room), with 1 exception. Even though there is a fridge in our staff room for lunches, every now and then the staff still sneak overflow into my fridge. It just creeps me out that they can still eat it after everything I put in there. I am tryi...

Thanks for all the help guys. I knew I could count on all of you to give me the answers no one else can! WorkSafe hasn't been able to give an answer just yet. I'm going to push to put Chemwatch in the budget for next year. Sound like a plan. Oh Lizzieb,thanks. Isn't she cute? Although I keep expecti...

we don't have chemgold or chemwatch. Its on the budget for next year (if all goes according to plan) but I'm not sure where to find state/federal legislation if this is sufficient. We don't have a science policy (yet) so I'm pretty much on my own.

I am in the middle of slowly updating all our MSDSs. I know that all the sheets should come from the manufacturer or supplier but what happens if these people are bought out or go bust? I have quite a few chemicals from BDH, which was bought out by VWR and while I can find the old MSDS sheets for th...

Thanks Lyn. I was pretty sure it wasn't my job but now I know that I can say NO! After reading your post I did turn around and tell him that if he wanted questions on that prac its up to him to write them, so thanks for that. He's not a bad guy or a lazy teacher, I think its just his way of using an...

smeee these labs look great, and the colour scheme just gives it a post-modern feel to it, very space-age. Makes me want to enrol in your school so I can use the lab. :giggle: How do you feel about a mature age student who will help you clean up after prac is finished? Oh well, I may just have to se...

I'd love to make that my motto, but my biggest offender is the Head of Science. She will regularly think "A demonstration would be great here. I think I'll just go through all the cupboards, use any chemicals and leave them sitting out to confuse my poor lab tech"

Does anyone have trouble with teachers not actually reading through the risks & controls or even actually use the eliminate/substitute thingy...? I do all my risk assessing the old fashioned way for no other reason than I have not heard of this program. (Poor isolated victorian). But I still ha...

Thanks Noona. I am reading through the booklet right now. Looks great!

I wouldn't use volumetric flasks simply because they are so hard to clean and this is really not their purpose anyway. It is not as though he needs to do an exact dilution or anything so i can't see why it would HAVE to be a volumetric flask. This is the reason we chemists have conical flasks and be...

Thanks smiley. I did that. I did remind him that I am doing so much extra for him at the moment. As in he decided that the year 9 course next year is boring so could I please think of some better topics to cover and write up pracs for them. Then he asked if he could have worksheets to go with each p...

I'm thinking this happens at all schools. My dad is an IT technician at the school he works at but he is also a licensed cabler. He does all the cabling in his free hours after his usual work for no extra money. He has his materials covered (I think) but not the tools he had to buy to get the job do...

I feel your pain Lada. I spent the better part of 2 days making sets of parachutes for the year 8 science class, changing one variable at a time, working out a set area that worked across 4 different shapes (using my year 9 maths skills) and cutting them out. There was meant to be 1 set of each. One...

I made up my own buffering solution using the Henderson-Hasselbach equation. Then using dilute NaOH and HCl, adjusted it to the pH I wanted. But if you don't need buffers you could use pH = -log[H+] to work out the concentrations of acid needed. That may be a little too mathy, though, if 've never d...

I have found http://www.sciencebob.com/index.php and the CSIRO website really useful for some safe and easy pracs that give a wow factor. If you visit Science Bob and look under experiments you will find "Fantastic Foamy Fountain" (check out the video as well) and "Making a Film Canis...

we are a little independent school so I'm assuming we missed out. We just don't have the budget for those luxuries. But we do have interactive whiteboards in every room in this building just not all staff can use them, because not all staff have computers.

laptops don't actually exist on the budget here. If staff want to use them, they have to bring in their own from home and get the IT people to put it on the network, which makes things difficult. I was going to bring in my own but most of the software is not conducive to my gorgeous but inconvient (...