Australia's Science Forum

Does your school required risk assessments on all hazardous chemicals/DG themselves (not just RA's on pracs) and if so would anyone mind sharing an example? I am currently reviewing our schools Haz Chem and DG management procedure (actually rewriting it would be a better description :-( ) and wanted...

Thanks. It has seemed to survive the long weekend without discolouring so I assume it will be good to go this afternoon

Anyone know how long it will last? I have pracs scheduled for over a 7 day period. If I make up the gel in bulk, will it be ok?

We have a brilliant art technician who is a ceramicist herself and the first thing she did was get rid of all the glazes with lead in them! There are still a couple that pop up on the hazardous chemical list, but the vast majority have been replaced with non hazardous versions. As for what is includ...

A few questions about your school wide register: What platform do you use? (e.g. excell, chemwatch, filemaker) Who is responsible for the overall upkeep? Does it just have hazardous chemicals? all chemicals? If just hazardous chemicals, do you have a separate school wide chemical inventory? If you h...

We just have one Year 11 Biology class doing this, and they punch the leaf holes out themselves. That might not be feasible depending on the age group and numbers, I suppose. We use spinach or silverbeet leaves. Usually they would but this is an prac test so time is limited and they want them pre c...

It's essentially this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f0V ... t?hl=en_US

but we don't use the soap and use old overhead projectors as the light source

Does anyone do the photosynthesis prac where you cut out disks of ivy, degas and place in bicarb solution? How long before hand can the leaf disks be prepared? I have 4 classes starting P1 Monday to prepare 15 groups of 40 each class! I am wanting to at least get a head start but I am assuming they ...

Has anyone done a trypsin prac using milk agar? All I have to go on is that they need milk agar and also a "low, medium and high" concentration of trypsin. Any insight as to concentrations and recipes for the agar would be appreciated

Both are coliforms. Proteus is the really smelly one that swarms over the plate. So you get a sheet of bacteria colonies that are grey/beige in colour and larger than the staph and strep. Staph are the creamy/yellow smaller colonies and strep are the small, round white (sometimes with a grey tinge) ...

What sort of gram positive and gram negative bacteria do you want to grow? I get plenty of staphylococcus (+), streptococcus(+), escherichia (-) and proteus(-) all growing on plain old nutrient agar. If you want to try a gr+ rod (Lactobacillus from a probiotic drink for example), you will need speci...

They have a label for the indicator in the standard labels in Risk Assess

If you type in Phenolphthalein you will get a whole heap of choices including:

Phenolphthalein >0.1% wt/wt in ethanol 24-70% wt/wt

What does everyone do with the waste product? It contains manganese so I am assuming I can't just put down the sink. Does anyone treat it?

Does anyone still do this? What safety additional procedures do you put in place? I have a teacher who wants to do this as a demo. The HOD and I are reluctant. I have looked at science assist, he has a slightly different method from RSC (UK). I'm a bit nervous to give my blessing having never done o...

Yes very curious as they are acting illegally. By law all chemicals supplied must have a manufacturers SDS. It is when you have chemicals from companies who no longer exist that it gets tricky.

Can you PM me the company as well?

The yellowing is the ageing of the mounting media/glue. I suppose that the stain could fade over time but I would say it would have to be a long long time. How are they stored? in a dark cupboard? My last school had slides decades old (I hazard a guess some were over 50 years old) and I didn't encou...

Does the CSIC reference where it is written that a sign is required? Or is it just their own safety measure. I've just had a prac has just come through using lasers (we didn't use them at my old school) and am wondering if I should do this (I am not in NSW)

Yes, new NG bunsens and no, gauze mats are not new. I have the gas installers coming in with their meters to help me run a mock up test of what happened. Will keep you posted.