Don't touch hot soldering irons...

[meanfreepath]

No, I didn't quite do that. But I did give myself a lovely second degree burn on the forearm when I touched the hot holder for the soldering iron. My postdoc and I were trying to do a tough solder on a relatively thick cable and a small connector. I think he was helping me hold the pieces and I was trying to do the soldering. Or maybe he was soldering; I'm not sure which. But I think I was trying to bring in the piece of solder and I reached over the base of the soldering iron, touching the hot wire holder. There's a nice burn that's blistered, but it's very local, less than 2 centimeters long and maybe 2 millimeters wide.

Today seems to be a day to be banged up... I got a lip cut when I missed a catch playing Ultimate Frisbee and the disc hit me in the mouth. Plus I twisted up an ankle when I leapt for the disk and landed funny. Oh well, all of these are very minor compared to what I've seen people play through. And I had a good time playing Ultimate and a pretty decent day in lab. Everything will be fine tomorrow, as long as I stretch out that ankle before trying to run on it.

Incidentally, it's my first injury doing physics. I've broken lots of glassware in chemistry labs (just ask Mrs. Indivero or Mrs. Rogers) but never in physics. Then again, I never hurt myself doing chemistry, amazingly enough, or rather because the chem department is anal in lab for a reason.

Comments

[sildra.livejournal.com]

When we were first learning to solder in physics 63, Jim told us that someone always gets burned in that class, and everyone gets burned sooner or later. I don't think I've ever been burned, but I once dripped some solder onto my shoe (luckily it cooled quickly enough that it didn't burn through, but... well, never solder in sandals).

[ex-entanglem979.livejournal.com]

(grins) Yay for breaking lots of glassware! Don't know if you're actually prone to breaking things, but it do make lab classes interesting. Hope you're having a great summer in the middle o' nowhere, man.