When Chemists Attack

This looks odd.

That’s the screen of our gas chromatograph. I’m attempting to set up this instrument for my summer students to use, and I’ve just turned on the instrument. This is the temperature reported by the instrument for one of the injection ports. These ports are heated during operation of the instrument, but:

• I had just turned the instrument on, and hadn’t yet turned on the heater – so the temperature should be about 22 or so degrees C.
• Even if I had used the instrument, this injection port wouldn’t be 520 degrees C.

I pondered this for a minute, and the instrument decided to tell me something else, instead.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Office Space, you know what my exact thought was at that moment.

“PRT NOT FOUND? What the f–k does that mean?”

So I looked the message up in the manual. It’s actually in there. It means “Call your Perkin-Elmer Service Representative”.

Somehow, I get the feeling that I should have known that.

Sigh. When it rains …