Slow Days

[LabbieSeth]

Hi all,

Just wanted to ask everyone what their work consists of on a slow day? What do you do to fill your time if you have a few slow days in a row?

We have had a very slow week this week with most of the science faculty teachers being off on sick leave, meaning no setting up or packing away of pracs, or getting asked to do miscellaneous things by teachers throughout the day, so I'm a little lost on what to do all day. I have reorganised and categorised everything including the chem store (which I wont work in at the moment anyway due to lack of ventilation), filled all dropper bottles, filled up all the stock solutions, even cleaned the floors

I am just struggling to keep myself busy so thought I'd pick everyone's brains and hopefully get some ideas on what to do!

[Pm706Narrogin]

Cleaned the floors?! Wow you were desperate

But in the same vein, cleaning the shelves.

Culling the shelves - if there's stuff that you've done stocktake for and never actually pulled it off the shelves, it can go. Or at least pull it out and make it visible. If no one you ask knows what it's used for or wants to use it, give it the flick. I've noticed some labbies are hoarders to an insane degree. I get the fear that the moment you chuck it someone will ask for it but we've just done a cull of things that are 30-40 years old that haven't been used in at least 15 years. If no one's asked for it for so long, they're unlikely to ask now

Relabelling - any chemical bottles with labels that look ratty? Containers or experiment set ups that could use labels? We've had some quiet days due to exams and we're trying to make all our containers of stuff on the shelves look consistent.

Worst case scenario do some research. If you know what's coming up next term, look for some cool prac ideas and make it your mission to recommend them to teachers

[LabbieSeth]

Relabelling is a great idea, thank you Pm! That will definitely take up some of my time!

We don't have a lot to throw out here as, since I started here a couple of years ago, I made it my mission to get rid of anything and everything broken, or that doesn't get used so that all the shelves are organised and not full of junk. According to the teachers, the prep room has never been so clean and had so much spare space xD

[bigmack]

Evaporation of Heavy metal waste to reduce volume for disposal .
In fume hood of coarse .

Cleaning the fumehood is always a fun job .

Clean out the S bends under all the lab benches .Always fun to see how much dirt , pencils and matchsticks are in there .

Count out and bundle up 4 class sets of 10x 30paddlepop sticks for that will test earthquake buildings again .

Find and cut up the 40 pieces of Card board that above will be made on .

[RosalieL]

I don't think I've ever had enough slow days in a row to get to that point!!

Cutting 1cm strips of magnesium, 20cm dialysis tubing, cleaning bunsens are things that come to mind...

I have school camps for yr 7-9 coming up next week (3 days) and I am really hoping 10, 11 and 12 don't do pracs so I can reclaim control of the prep room those days!

[bigmack]

Refurbishing Old rheostats

viewtopic.php?p=43027#p43027

Cleaning electrodes.

https://chemtalk.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=43583#p43583

Make Cheat sheets . This is really time consuming if you are a clutz on the keyboard like me . But teachers really appreciate them .

https://chemtalk.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=50811#p50811

[LabbieSeth]

All of these are great suggestions!! Thank you all!

[Anna Z]

Another good one is revamping the display cabinets they can truly look amazing when you get enough time to be a little creative.

[Pm706Narrogin]

Another one from Friday - rearranging/cleaning drawers.

We've got a set of drawers out of the way where we've accumulated enough spare glassware to last us about 20 years (take that inflation!). They were in a weird order so we pulled everything out, cleaned the inside of the drawers and arranged them in order.

10mL, 25mL, 50mL, 100mL, 250mL measuring cylinders. Then 100mL, 250mL, 500mL, 600mL beakers. Then 100mL and 250mL conical flasks. And a separate drawer for funnels, evaporating basins and crucibles

[RosalieL]

Another one from Friday - rearranging/cleaning drawers.

We've got a set of drawers out of the way where we've accumulated enough spare glassware to last us about 20 years (take that inflation!). They were in a weird order so we pulled everything out, cleaned the inside of the drawers and arranged them in order.

10mL, 25mL, 50mL, 100mL, 250mL measuring cylinders. Then 100mL, 250mL, 500mL, 600mL beakers. Then 100mL and 250mL conical flasks. And a separate drawer for funnels, evaporating basins and crucibles

That would have been soooooo satisfying!!

[Pm706Narrogin]

It was! We already had them in separate drawers but the order was all over the place. Now it flows nicely.

This also served as a reminder I haven't updated the move on the stocktake. I think I've found my after lunch job

[RosalieL]

Another suggestion - pulling apart and cleaning burette taps (if you don't do it when they come back from classes - usually I just wash them the best I can and hang them up to dry and hope for the best because I don't have the time or space to pull them apart and clean individually)

[newbie]

I have just gone through my SDS and updating ones from 2020. Also cleaned all our glass pippettes.