Wednesday, September 14, 2011

11 other uses for Parafilm

Photo credit: 2spi.com
1. Threw away that wine cork? Well...
2. Grafting trees?
3. Patched a hole in a tire once.
4. Improving the seal on Aldrich Sure-Seal bottles.*
5. This one time, in the lab, we were attacked by rifle-wielding members of another group (they ran out of funding and were getting reagents by alternate means.) My buddy took a round in the shoulder. We plugged it with Parafilm -- it was a pretty bad wound, so it needed two squares.
6. Improving vacuum on a vacuum distillation.
7. I hear the cockpit window of the SR-71 was half-titanium, half-Parafilm.
8. Ran out of earplugs and want to not hear the boss droning on?
9. Made a sculpture of a bird from 2 boxes of Parafilm once -- after hitting it with a heat gun, it flew off.
10. Makes a great last-minute birthday gift for your kids.
11. You know how there's no dental insurance in grad school? Well, I lost a filling once...

*They tell you not to do that -- I believe them. 

6 comments:

  1. Useful for sticking together two short spatulas because you need a long one, but no long ones can be found in the lab.

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  2. Tupperware replacement lid.

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  3. You can always spot the newbie in a chemistry lab by how they parafilm their reagent bottles. Takes time to learn that it's *stretchy* !

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  4. the wiki link you gave says it is also great for rearing your bedbugs and moskitos in a lab

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  5. Per #10 with a little cotton string as the wick can even roll candles for the cake.

    However for most of the above I am a Duct tape man myself.

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  6. The new Sure-Seals from Aldrich are 1000% better than their old ones (and better than Acros' also). This may signal one less use for parafilm. :-(

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