Because it matters

I am saddened to report that a fellow chemist has died from the injuries she suffered from an accident involving a commonly used reagent in a chemistry lab at UCLA. The reagent is called t-butyllithium and I have used it several times before myself. It is so reactive with water that it reacts with trace moisture in the air, and that reaction being so exothermic, it spontaneously ignites. Read the rest of this entry »