Its a good thing my eyes can't actually shoot daggers

The BBQ Pit
1

At what point is it legal, or at least defensible for me to murder (or maim) my lab partners?

No, really.

Our first meeting: I show up on time…and wait…and wait…and finally just start working. I e-mail saying “Hey guys…am I in the right place?” One shows up half an hour late. The other an hour and ten minutes late. I seethe, but figure its a Sunday afternoon, its once, etc.

Our first lab day: I am treated like the retarded sister in the lab, my contributions ignored or argued with. Now, I wouldn’t mind shutting up if these boys were on top of their game, but on day one I was still the only person who had read all of the lab material. I had an argument with one of them where I tried to explain why we couldn’t seperate sand from copper by using a magnet. (Copper being, you know, non ferrous, and thus non magnetic.) He had to ask the prof about that one, and I was unable to do more than scrape my jaw off the floor and go set something else up for the lab.

Our second lab day: It takes both Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber to drain the samples to put them in the oven for drying. Complete with them bringing me a pan still covered in copper particles(the stuff we are trying to get back out of the experiment) and saying that they are sure that they are stuck on and won’t come off. I ask if they have tried acetone, given that copper is hydrophobic (and wettability being the very thing we are TESTING in this lab, they know it doesn’t stick to water if they understand word one of what we are doing.) which results in another arguement where its obvious they think I’m an idiot while I fetch a clean squeegee bottle, fill it with acetone and proceed to rinse down the pan without a problem. By myself, because while they find it impossible to hold the sieve and rinse the pan with only one person, I have no problem with it.

And now, they wanted to meet tonight to work on the final paper. At six thirty. Its five after seven and I’m the only one here.

I am so not pleased.

The not appreciating and totally ignoring my contributions to the lab could get a pass…if they weren’t only barely competent in the first place. Between the two of them I may have one lab partner who can tie his own shoes in the morning. This is an upper level Chemical Engineering Lab. I hope to hell that neither of you have a job anywhere, because you don’t understand the basics of how to read and integrate even remotely technical documents into a physical understanding of procedure. Neither one of you have an understanding of scientific method (you can’t change things in the middle of a test run, it fucks up the data, I promise.)

Gah! It would be almost okay if either one of them had more than four lonely little brain cells. I can’t even blame it on being a communications major or something. Add to that the inability to show up on time, and I’m severely pissed. I have things to do, I schedule my life accordingly, if I can fit this in, so can you. I fit this meeting in on less than a day’s notice on your request. Where the hell are you so I can fucking slap the shit out of both of you?!

2

I’d have just tossed the sand/copper mix into some concentrated nitric acid, collected the nitrate, and plated it out electrolytically -Probably flunk the course too, depending on why you’re doing what you’re doing.
However, clueless asshats are everywhere. You’d best figure out how to deal with them without blowing a gasket. It does suck bigtime though.

3

If I can make a serious suggestion.

Document all of this. Every time you set up a time to meet, and they’re late, document it. Document who does what in the experiment. This way, if push comes to shove, you can discuss this with your professor/TA.

There’s no reason your grade should suffer because of the asshattedness of your labmates.

Robin

4

You know, chem labs contain many powerful and humorous acids…

5

Sqink, that would be an approriate solution, actually. Its a pretty loose lab. Its for upper level Chem Engs, so its basically “Here’s equipment and a pile of documentation. Here’s what’s available in the lab. Create an experiment, do it, write it up, and present it.”

I’m only so upset because I have never had a bad experiance with my engineering groups. I’m a dual degree student and while the CAS groups may have thier issues, engineering groups have, up to this point, been highly focused and reasonably capable. (Or the members that weren’t as capable were at the very least working their asses off.) I have never felt like I was being so disrespected, ignored, or hindered. Like I said, if these bozos were competent, I’d fade into the background and do whatever they asked me to and not fight it. But they treat me like I’m an idiot, barely trusted to find water, and yet they can’t do any of what is necessary until after they have argued with me about it, discared my (educated) opinion and asked the professor. Who tells them what I had already said. Its highly frusterating. I’m so flustered I can’t parse English.

Robin, I am documenting. Though I’m probably going to sit down with the prof this week. This is pure and total bullshit. Its a nine person lab, there is no reason for this crap. None. I don’t care if they ahve a problem with female engineers or me in particular, but we are bringing this shit to a close and soon.

6

This is why I fucking hated chem labs in school. I would invariably get grouped with some numbskulls who never gave a shit about doing the experiment right or reading the fucking directions. Then they’d insist that we just fake all the data, since we “knew what was supposed to happen.” (Except they were stupid, and in fact did not know what was supposed to actually happen.)

I bitched to my prof after a couple weeks and he let me do my own labs thereafter. I got an A.

7

Austenitic steels, that is those combining ferric carbide with the iron, are also non-magnetic. Not that this changes anything you said, but there are non-magnetic alloys which are also ferrous.