[Noisebridge-discuss] Re: Draft Finance Policy

[Meredith L. Patterson]

Mitch Altman wrote:
> Though, the general feeling from discussions thus far (where I've been 
> around) has been:  if you bring something to Noisebridge, you should be 
> OK with it breaking, or getting stolen, or otherwise becoming unusable.  
> I'm not sure how we could handle it in other ways, unless the equipment 
> in question is extremely valuable, in which case our insurance may be 
> able to cover loss.

Honestly, my concern is not so much "OMG that was my $150 Liebig 
condenser!" as it is "oh shit, the condenser's broken and now nobody can 
do a distillation or a reflux reaction."

I won't be bringing anything of real sentimental value (eg the glassware 
my dad bought for himself in college and then gave to me). I do expect 
anything I bring in to get used and treated well (i.e., cleaned and put 
back dry so that the next guy's reaction doesn't get contaminated), but 
realistically, glass does break (or stuff gets charred onto the bottom 
of it and can't be gotten off, &c). The situation I'm worried about is 
where some expensive and key piece of glass gets broken and whoever 
broke it can't afford to replace it, thus rendering the entire 
collection mostly useless for everyone else. I have a mostly-complete 
setup for one person, and don't have backups for a lot of my gear.

I dunno, could we perhaps set aside $250 or so in an "emergency glass 
breakage fund" to cover accidents, with people paying back into the fund 
if they can't immediately replace a broken item? I also like Shannon's 
idea of putting up a "cost to replace if broken" list, perhaps on the 
glassware cabinet -- this can serve as an inventory as well.

I could also give a little workshop on "lab glassware, how to use it, 
and how to treat it and your lab-mates with respect". From experience, 
when personal stress erupts in labs, it's usually due to people treading 
on one another's toes with respect to equipment and reagents. You'd 
think "don't take equipment from someone's reaction *while it's in 
progress*" would be pretty obvious, but in practice ... it isn't.

Oh, another thought -- a full set of microscale glassware can be had on 
ebay for about $220. Some guy also has five very nice microscale kits in 
his ebay store for $995 right now. Most of my kit is either 24/40 
standard taper (the size you probably worked with in high school) or 
stuff that I've hacked to be 24/40-compatible with stoppers and tubing. 
Microscale glassware is 14/10 standard taper, which is much smaller, but 
it's just as easy to work with (in some ways easier -- you can do 
reactions under inert atmosphere using nothing but a party balloon), is 
*much* easier to store (a set comes in a sturdy plastic box with 
protective foam inserts), and is cheaper to replace when things break. I 
also have an organic chem lab manual which shows how to do do workups 
for 24/40 scale, miniscale (19/22), and microscale equipment, and would 
be happy to bring that in too.

--mlp