Strange things happening in the lab - Do you want to share? (May/18/2007 )

In our lab something mysterious is going on. We are not sure if it is anti-matter or a localized black-whole, maybe alos some special kind of bacteria or ??? ghosts ???
I am speaking of the phenomen of disappearing chocolate which we encounter on a regular base. No matter what kind of chocolate, which amounts (100g - 1,5 kg tested). If one brings it in the morning, it has disappeared by noon - and no lab member has eatten any of it...

Any explanation or theory? Something similar applies to cakes, cookies, more or less every form of sweets ...

I think, if we could discover anti-chocolate in our lab, this would really be a major scientific breakthrough

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Oh we should definitely follow the example of the airport/ border US immigration officials- do a strip and search on all potential perps (guilty until proven innocent). That should do the trick. These 'hot items' don't just up and run away. They're in there somewhere ... on someone else's self or body cavity, unfortunately by the time a search is first instituted, the merchandise is already converted to glucose and water. There should be no mercy for these thieves, the menace of our society.

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Recently I went to a friend's lab which is located in a different area of the city from mine. I noticed that all balances are chain locked. It really surprised me. My friend told me that they were keeping loosing balances. Can you help solve the case of missing balances?

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That will be kewl.

Make powder/paste/gel/suspension form of it and apply locally on teeth after eating chocholates. That will help some dental problems.

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for the balances - they were stolen often in a place that I worked once. that particular place did not have good security and random people had access to the building. it was thought that the most likely thieves would be people who were making/selling crystal meth (or perhaps for other drugs)

I mean, what other purpose could you possibly imagine that one would need such a precise means of measuring weight?

anyways, no proof...but 3 scales disappeared over about 2 years before they began to lock them down. theft by drug-makers seemed the most logical explanation

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Yes, the same happened once in my university, some precision balances dissapeared at the same time and eveybody said that drug-makers had been the thieves. It´s really annoying

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Sometimes, the balanace thief may be a poor student who works for the drug dealer.
One of my friend told me that she was asked by the drug dealer but she declined.
Before eBay, the drug dealers have to steal balance from the lab because they cannot buy balance from the supplier. The supplier normally asked them their passport number or Driver License.

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May be a poor PhD student who is so poor to afford proper food.

I was a very poor PhD student, but I never steal people food.
Instead, I stole the full cream milk in the tea room and drank them when I was very hungry and cannot afford to buy any proper food...sometime half a litre.

Some poor student may be struggle to decide whether to spend the money on food or on transport..

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For the chocolate, could be the lab mice that took it.

As for weighing tool, that would be the work of memory-challenged people. Haha

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Balances disappearing is often drug thieves, here in NZ some chemist invented a very easy drug synthesis known as homebake in the late 70's, based around codeine and converting it into a morphine and heroin I think, so certain chemicals and balances started disappearing around NZ at that time and the thefts slowly progressed to Australia some 5-10 years later. We keep all of the relevant chemicals under careful lock and key here. It must have finally hit the US, look out for pyridine disappearing too!

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