My thought at the first panel was ‘welp, time for the Motrin’. Then ‘ohhh’.
I thought it was the same thing in the first frame : D
Panel 3 makes sense both ways. x_x
That’s exactly what I thought too. I had to stare at this one for a while to get it.
I saw birth control -> baby scale -> death. I was like wtf. Lol.
That’ll happen when you set the baby scale to 13,200 rpm.
I don’t get it. Can someone explain?

First frame isa centrifuge that spins samples at high speed to separate the components in them (I think that’s the purpose, not a scientist).

I hear that if it’s unbalanced, bad things happen, because you’re not spinning an unbalanced rotor at high speeds.

I honestly was coming to check the comments to see if anyone had experience with it so I could ask how bad it is.

The centrifuge would not run like that, it noticed the vibrations and turns off. They had that “feature” for decades now.

That’s awesome… And also funny that it had to be added. Thanks for the info!

I still want to know what happens on an old one without vibration detection or if it was “broken”. I assume something like an unbalanced washing machine but on a smaller scale? It just going out for a stroll :)

Oh that can absolutely end in a desaster. Like not breaking when driving a car when you absolutely should.
Science is a whole lot of adjusting after someone died. Like, it’s mostly been that.
So is OSHA!
Lemmy needs /c/writteninblood. That sub was one of the highlights of education in reddit.
The bigger ones that run at 16000 do, 8000 from what I know, 4000 is just a motor and timer.

ehrs.upenn.edu/…/ultracentrifuge-explosion-damage…

This is a famous example from when they didn’t have alarms. The don’t just happily wobble across the room.

Ultracentrifuge Explosion Damages Laboratory | PennEHRS

On December 16, 1998, milk samples were running in a Beckman L2-65B ultracentrifuge using a large aluminum rotor (a rotor is a large metal object that holds the individual sample tubes and is connected to the spin drive of the centrifuge). The rotor had been used for  this procedure many times before. Approximately one hour into the operation, the rotor failed due to excessive mechanical stress caused by the "G" forces of the high rotation speed. The subsequent explosion completely destroyed the centrifuge (Images 1 & 2).

IMO, you missed the best bit off:

A shock wave from the accident shattered all four windows in the room. The shock wave also destroyed the control system for an incubator and shook an interior wall causing shelving on the wall to collapse.

I forget that there are large centrifuges (somebody posted about Stuxnet further down).

Or, more accurately, I’m more familiar with the small ones (ThermoFisher calls them “Mini” and “Micro” centrifuges) for ~0.5mL samples and I had a hard time thinking that those would blow out a room. But the same link (ThermFisher) that I looked at to find the names also specifies 17,000g and 21,000g models which is just… fucking insane. I knew they spun fast, I didn’t know they spun 21,000g’s fast. Learn something new every day.

I work in a lab. I’ve seen centrifuges try to walk off the counter before.
I thought it was a birth control pill box.
I got weird rotary phone, GameCube, then that funeral video. I sort of thought this was some millennial meme I’m too out of the loop to understand. Lemmy is full of those.
The funeral depicted is a viral video where the pallbearers are dancing/swaying so it’s like you’ll die and even your casket will be moving afterwards.
I’m not sure about the more classic devices but a lot of game controllers and phones these days use linear motors or similar piezoelectric devices for vibration. For instance Apple’s “Taptic Engine”.
iPhone hardware - Wikipedia

It depends on the speed and size of the centrifuge, the mass of the load, and the magnitude of the imbalance. Someone else mentioned an ultracentrifuge, typically a large, washing-machine-like device that can spin larger loads at high velocity. The amount of energy released if they become significantly unbalanced is pretty huge: they have a containment layer, but some could kill you if the load got through and hit you.

On the flip side, I may have intentionally ran unbalanced microcentrifuges a few (many, it was many) times as a grad student because I was too tired and lazy to make a counterweight. I just held it down with fairly firm pressure and it was fine. That’s not very good for its bearings, though. Sorry lab manager!

I was thinking wheel balancer

to separate the conponents

Scientist here. That’s what it’s for. A centrifuge makes the tubes experience very high accelerations, like 100 times the force of gravity, to separate liquids and solids by density. For example you could put blood in there and get a layer of red blood cells and a layer of plasma stacked on top of each other.

More like 16,000 x g for a normal desktop centrifuge and 80,000 x g+ for an ultracentrifuge
Ghana's dancing pallbearers - BBC Africa

YouTube
Unbalanced centrifuge, IRL a small tabletop one like the image will just be a really expensive mistake, but the worst case scenario can indeed be lethal. Here is a larger one exploding www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8IOL5iLwG8&t=40
Centrifuge Explosion @Chemical Industry

YouTube
Crazy video… can you remove the timestamp? 40s shows the aftermath.
Centrifuge Explosion @Chemical Industry

YouTube

Folks reading way too much into this lol.

The meme is from a music video with a strong percussive beat; not unlike an off balance centrifuge.

The music video: youtu.be/j9V78UbdzWI

Coffin Dance (Official Music Video HD)

YouTube

Folks reading way too much into this lol.

reads too much into it

The joke is they died!

  • Remove the counterweight from your washing machine.
  • Throw said counterweight inside the washing machine.
  • Activate the spin cycle of your washing machine.
  • Find out.
  • :)

    Nor in the pic: the lab technician going to jail for murder. Or the broken centrifuge.
    I was on the room next to an ultracentrifuge when it went off balance (one of the tubes in it cracked). The outer containment (barely) held, but that’s one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard.
    Nothing quite like the sound of several kilos of solid steel getting turned into confetti
    Y’all don’t sit in your centrifuges?
    ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
    I once had the inner lid of a microcentrifuge (one of the plastic ones with a snap-like closure) pop off mid-spin. It shot upward with enough force that it knocked the fully latched upper lid open and then shot across the room like a frisbee. Luckily it just hit some shelves and landed on the floor so nobody was hurt but it scared the shit out of me.
    Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.