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.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Nothing quite like the sound of several kilos of solid steel getting turned into confetti
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
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.
I don’t get it. Can someone explain?
First frame is a centrifuge that spins samples at high speed to separate the components in them (I think that's the purpose, not a scientist). But, the samples are on one side making it unbalanced.
Second frame is turning the centrifuge on.
Third frame is a funeral.
I hear that if it's unbalanced, bad things happen, because you're 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 comic is insinuating that if you do this, you die.
EDIT: an unbalanced weight on a motor is how the vibration function in your phone works... Along with other things that need to vibrate (yes, those things). At least, that's how they used to work.
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 :)
Science is a whole lot of adjusting after someone died. Like, it’s mostly been that.
e: want nightmares? Here’s the Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award. All the precautions and yet… not enough.
So is OSHA!
And the FAA!
Lemmy needs /c/writteninblood. That sub was one of the highlights of education on reddit.
This is a famous example from when they didn't have alarms. The don't just happily wobble across the room.
The safety shielding in the unit did not contain all the metal fragments. The half-inch thick sliding steel door on top of the unit buckled allowing fragments, including the steel rotor top, to escape (Image 3). Fragments ruined a nearby refrigerator and an ultra-cold freezer in addition to making holes in the walls and ceiling. The unit itself was propelled sideways and damaged cabinets and shelving that contained over a hundred containers of chemicals.
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.
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.
Oh that can absolutely end in a desaster. Like not breaking when driving a car when you absolutely should.
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
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 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.
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
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”.
- Remove the counterweight from your washing machine.
- Throw said counterweight inside the washing machine.
- Activate the spin cycle of your washing machine.
- Find out.
:)
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8IOL5iLwG8
Crazy video... can you remove the timestamp? 40s shows the aftermath.
Whoa. That young kid just disappeared. :(
e: trigger warning. Nothing is visible in this video but a massive explosion, but there’s a kid in close proximity before it happens.
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: https://youtu.be/j9V78UbdzWI
Folks reading way too much into this lol.
reads too much into it
The joke is they died!
Nor in the pic: the lab technician going to jail for murder. Or the broken centrifuge.
My thought at the first panel was ‘welp, time for the Motrin’. Then ‘ohhh’.
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.
That's exactly what I thought too. I had to stare at this one for a while to get it.
I thought it was the same thing in the first frame : D
Panel 3 makes sense both ways. (x_x)