What Are Basic Things a Chemistry Lab Student Should Know?

Hi, I'm Robin Higgins and this basic things a Chemistry lab student should know. Alright, so, hopefully if you're a new Chemistry student and you're about to begin a lab class, your teacher should explain everything and down to every detail of what you should be doing, what you should know. But overall, there are a couple of things that won't hurt to know going in. Number one, and this is definitely going to be hammered into by, wherever you're taking lab class is safety. So, it's just especially important to know about Chemistry safety because you can get hurt in a lot of ways than you wouldn't be able to in normal life. Like normal life, maybe you'd watch out for sharp objects but you wouldn't be thinking about breathing in certain air and not breathing in other parts of air. But in Chemistry if you have somebody who's letting out fumes, it's really important to not breath right into it. So, the most important thing about safety is having the correct PPE, which is personal protection and so this includes lab coat, goggles, and gloves. It also includes closed toed shoes and wearing pants. Although they always say that you can wear a skirt if it's floor length, but I've never seen anyone do that. Alright, so that's the number one things, safety and always going to lab and really respect the PPE. And this is just important to, you know, people like to kind of slack off and not do this stuff, but it's that one in a million chance where a glass shard flies into your eye, like why were you not wearing, like it wasn't worth looking cool those other times to now have a glass shard in your eye, or maybe it was; like I said, it's up to you, you probably get points off if you won't wear goggles. Alright, so safety which is mostly PPE and then just being careful listening to people, specifically your instructor. Alright, so besides general safety, I think the other things that you should really know before you go into lab, it doesn't matter if you know it or not 'cause you can learn it with gen lab is basic techniques. And so, this just involves being able to pour things carefully and reading measurements and then just using really basic materials like a pipette. So, you know a pipette is a little bulb out here, you've got the, and you've got where it picks up water and or whatever liquid, and so, you know, to use it you just squeeze the bulb, insert into liquid and then release the bulb. And so, just little things like that, but once again, you know, your lab instructor should tell you everything. So, I hope you have fun in your lab course and be safe. I'm Robin Higgins and this is, "What are basic things that a beginning laboratory student should know?"