Bean sprouts
One of the research groups here used to have theme nights, in which everyone would take along food, usually from a particular country or style of cuisine, and have a nosh up. As is the nature of scientific research we have people from all over the world, which meant the variety of food was tremendous.

Anyhow, a few years back my mate Gary had been to one of these nights, and taken along bean sprouts and the like in a Tupperware tub. The next day, one of the students handed back his tub. Gary put it away in his office and thought nothing of it.

Two weeks or so passed. I was in Gary's office and commented about an odd smell, which appeared to be coming from the bin. He thought it may have been some of his colleagues putting coffee grounds in the bin.

Another week later, I was in his office again and the smell was now really bad. A bit later, Gary appeared in the lab, carrying his Tupperware tub which, unknown to him, still contained a significant quantity of bean sprouts, now of course somewhat putrefied. He had assumed the student had washed it before giving him it back. He opened it up, and I shouted to him to put it in the fume cupboard before we all got a whiff.

However, just at that moment, the fire alarm went off, so we all trooped outside PDQ. Half an hour later, after the fire brigade had confirmed it was a false alarm, we got back in to the building. The smell was through the whole ground floor. One of our technicians nearly spewed and had to run to the toilet.

The results of this scientific experiment were:

1 - Bean sprouts decompose in anaerobic conditions to form highly noxious compounds
2 - Tupperware is not as airtight as you'd imagine.
3 - Fire alarms have a habit of going off at the oddest times.

No apologies for length. You know you like it that way.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 17 May 2007, 10:49, Reply)