#the ic requires sulfuric acid and is perpetually angry. plus it makes me come in on saturdays sometimes to turn it off. not nice.

[hylianengineer]

What's the most evil lab equipment in your opinion 😂

In my very subjective opinion? Ion chromatographs are on my shit list. It's not really their fault - the one I have to work with is old, hasn't been maintained properly, and no one else knows how to use it so I have to figure out everything myself, which is NOT FUN! It's finicky, frustrating, and it requires working with sulfuric acid, which I do not enjoy. It's very very sensitive and if you accidentally contaminate it with ions, you will be troubleshooting for weeks trying to figure out what happened. Ions are everywhere, in everything. In dust, in tap water (and nearly all filtered water, we have a special machine that makes Ultra Pure water with no ions or anything in it), on your skin, on virtually every surface that hasn't been specially cleaned. So if you have extra ions that shouldn't be there, it's a guessing game - are they from the sample? The eluent? Sample vials? Glassware? Is the water filter malfunctioning? Are the ions even there at all or is the detector messed up? You just have to keep trying stuff until it sorts itself out. The one I work with has NOT sorted itself out yet and I've been at this for over two weeks. I'm at my wit's end here.

And bonus answer for non-instrument equipment: drying tins. They're these little aluminum trays to put soil or whatever in when you stick them in the drying oven but they make Bad Noises when they scrape together. Also they bend easily, so if you stack them and then they get knocked around, sometimes it becomes very very difficult to get them apart.

In contrast, the best instrument is the Gas Chromatograph and the best other equipment is micropippettes. The GC is straightforward, easy to use, really hard to contaminate, and rarely has technical problems (plus when it does, they're not my problem - I am not the designated GC expert). Micropippettes are just fun because it's satisfying to click the button to release the pipette tip and launch it into the trash can.