From JOHN CROCKER
How correct Graeme Coulam is concerning the domestic value of laboratory
equipment (‘Out of the fume cupboard, into the home’, Forum, 9 June). My
wife and I have made use of assorted glass bottles, flasks and tanks for
ornamental or functional purposes around our house. A reagent bottle bearing
the sand-blasted label ‘Conc. Nitric Acid’, makes an attractive spirit decanter
(after a thorough chromic and detergent wash!). Glass tanks of all sizes
may accommodate flower arrangements from posies to long-stemmed displays.
But perhaps our piece de resistance was my old Kipps Apparatus, often
used as a bottle garden. This supported a virulent mixture of ivy plants
for some years, which emanated from all orifices of the equipment. It never
lost wholly that faint sulphurous odour, but perhaps trace elements played
a part in the exuberant plant growth. We never did find a use for that old
bench centrifuge, though.
John Crocker Birmingham
