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I use a bit of boiling water to help dissolve the nutrient agar, add distilled water, put it into conical flasks, cotton wool plug, autoclave, (I use a pressure cooker), this kills everything. You do not have to sterilise anything. I use unopened bag of petri dishes. I wash the bench surfaces in a d...

Welcome back everyone. I had a quiet one, animals and gardening duties. Baby chicks aplenty, vege patch and orchards looking better and alpacas shorn. I am taking time to have adventures on the days I don't work, while there are no crowds. Beach break booked. I have lots of new teachers and feel exh...

I will use your pics. Many years ago I had a teacher set this up in the fume hood with left over heart dissections. She didn't tell me and back then the fumehood was at the back of a classroom. When she remembered it was abuzz. I bailed. Teacher had to do the clean. I have never done it since.

organic solvents would include alcohols, esters, ethers, ethyl acetate, ethanol, acetone, benzene, and ketones. A work colleague's husband recently had a lung transplant due to lung disease caused from exposure to "organic solvents". Last year I had an unexpected lung cancer diagnosis and ...

Wiltronics in Melbourne.

To get the NO2 I use a quick fit set up and put the tubing up through a beehive in a trough of water, I have the test tubes ready and wear full PPE and do it in the fume hood. Sometimes I used a gas jar and for another prac, gas syringes.

Are multimeters any good as a substitute? They are so cheap. I have older meters and dread getting them out for junior classes.

We just did a geology PD with our lab tech group in Gippsland, I will see if I can find the links we were given. It was from james.driscoll@monash.edu James was great and there are ID pages and lesson plans he was happy to send us.

There is 2 more parts to this prac. per student: 5 x 10-4M Fe(SCN)2+ solutions. and 2 x stoppered test tubes containing an NO2/N2O4 mixture. It's in my old Heinemann Chemistry TWO teachers resource book. We aren't running yr 12 chem atm so I don't have the current prac book. I remember it worked wel...

I use Westlab hoses for the distillation sets. The green silicon stuff. They are easier to detach.

I don't store 3 or 6% for long in dropping bottles anymore as the rubber teats blow up, but never burst. I decant the solutions into a screw top bottles and have never had a problem. Never huge amounts as I am a small school. The 35% is always stable and stored in 5.1. If anything it may become less...

Years ago I got new components made up from Haines, the size available was not compatible with all my existing quick fit. Mine are 24/29. Haines were very helpful. Expensive though. I have never had the need for 1000ml flasks but have had some donated from a research facility.

I had a Duracell AA explode, spat out the carbon rod. Aldi take old batteries, don't know about Lithium.

What are people currently using for dissection trays? We have a heap of ice cream container lids but the bio teacher has requested actual dissection trays. Upon searching, I can only find the wax ones. I've never used those before. At my previous school we had shallow grey trays but I must be using...

Here it depends on the teachers. Some years we do staff morning tea with the current theme, quizzes etc and student lunch time activities. This year we only did the escape room through Stile.

The Cs-137 generator is actually really handy, I'd be surprised if you couldn't find another school in Tas to take it off your hands. It's a fast, simple, safe and clean way to show radiation decay in the classroom. I'd take it from you but we already have 2. I would ask your science teachers to co...

I have a plastic jar of calcium oxide that I'm pretty sure hasn't been requested in the nearly 4 years I have been at this school. Is this chemical ever used?? I want to get rid of it. It is in a zip lock bag but the jar itself is quite expanded and I am paranoid of touching it and having it explod...

Did you google it? I just did, looks brilliant. Bring it to our lab tech meeting and we can all problem solve it. Also send a pic to our ex mad physics teacher, SP. Also Harvey at Principles and Practise might know.

Use for classic rate of reaction experiments, to show/measure how temperature and concentration effect the rate. Use 2M HCl and 0.25M sodium thiosulphate. The two chemicals react to form a sulphur colloid makingthe solution cloudy. The time taken for the precipitate to obscure a cross marked on a p...