Why you need to wear safety glasses - Periodic Table of Videos 

But you _thought_ about getting real eyeballs. That's why I love you guys.

There's a Hungarian saying for this, which sounds really cool in its original language, I'll try my best to give an English equivalent: "better an eyeglass today, than a glass eye tomorrow."

When Neil says "whoa" calmly, you know its serious.

“You can’t throw away your eyeballs more than once” Wise words!

This should be a requisite training video for all students and industry professionals. This really REALLY reinforces the absolute requirement for safety glasses at a MINIMUM.

Science teachers need to show this video to all of their pupils.

As an ophthalmologist, I really appreciate this video. Quite apart from the danger of acid and (worse) alkali burns, penetrating injury can be blinding, even when the particle involved is tiny. The merest speck of intraocular iron, for example, will set up a chronic inflammatory reaction that has the potential to cause blindness weeks or months after the initial event. Infective endophthalmitis is also a possibility if even a single viable bacterium is carried into the eye by a penetrating foreign body.

Not just flying pieces of glass, a single drop of any concentrated strong acid and it's over as well. Even some solvents would blind you right away. In my opinion, glasses are even more important than gloves!

Never go without them. I can't see myself losing my vision.

"You can't throw away your eyeballs... more than once" - Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff 2018

Eye opening experience.

I had a friend drilling hardened steel with a carbide tipped high speed steel bit. He was leaning in close, dripping oil into the hole from an oil can. The drill bit hit a slag inclusion in the metal, binding it. The drill bit failed catastrophically, and a piece of the drill bit stuck in his heavy apron, sharp end first. Another, larger piece flew into his safety glasses, knocked them askew and gouged a piece of polycarbonate out and leaving the groove slightly blackened. Another fragment slightly injured his finger, which he wiped off and put on an adhesive bandage. He would have been much more seriously injured without safety gear, and would probably have lost vision in one eye from this incident.

I wish I could see this video but sadly I had an accident and my eyeballs had to be replaced by tomatoes

"new meaning to getting your eyes peeled" LOL

I worked in a workshop and right above the lathe there was a pair of safety glasses exposed with a nail stuck one inch into one lens. The person which eyes were saved hanged the goggles to be seen by everybody as a reminder of what could have happened if he wasn't wearing them.

After watching this, some people will still refuse to wear safety glasses/goggles.

In high school, my woodshop teacher put up a picture next to the safety googles. It was a x-ray of a man with a nail in his skull. Underneath it was a note that said "Don't let this happen to you. Wear eye protection."

This should be shown in every school and college throughout!

I agree with the comments below about science teachers showing this to pupils. However this video should be shown in every Health & Safety training as an example of why H&S exists and everyone who has the training should before the video be given a pair of cherry tomatoes to look after before the start of the training. See how many are safe by the end.

I'm looking forward to other episodes in the series "tomatoes, safety glasses and dangerous things" where you pour acid on tomatoes, shine lasers on them, vapors, heat, cold, shockwaves, flames, spilled chemicals, etc!

Even back in elementary school science class in the 1970's we wore them. Back then they were clunky plexiglass goggle things but thankfully we never had to test them out. Personally I still prefer the goggles as the cover the sides of your eyes too and you can wear them with prescription glasses.

Considering the number of times my eyes have been saved from small flying objects just by wearing simple, smallish specs, I can attest to even minor obstructions preventing major pain. Wear the damn goggles people. Makes you look cool - at least to all the science folk.

This reminds me of the old astronomy joke. How many times can you see the Sun through a telescope? Twice... once if you use binoculars...

Thank you guys so much for all you do. I wish more universities would produce material like this. Free exchange of knowledge is what the internet and RU-vid is all about. A grateful world thanks you from the bottom of our hearts.

“Two of the tomatoes are wearing safety glasses” 😂

I go to a technical school and took a welding class for about a week during rotations, almost every lab there stresses the importance of safety goggles but this teacher took it super seriously. At the start of the rotation, he was talking about lab safety, going over stuff like leather boots and heavy pants, he asked the class how metal fragments are removed from an eye? People would guess stuff like "they're pulled out with tweezers" or "the eye has to be removed" The teacher said, "The fragments have to be removed with a drill, during this operation you can't be anesthetized since the eye has to be held in place and the eye rolls around if you're unconscious." He also told the story of a student from multiple years ago who got some metal in his eye, the student didn't tell anyone and for about week had metal in his eye, slowly his vision in that eye got darker and more blurry. He ended up going to the teacher and admitted what happened. He went to the hospital and got it removed, his vision never fully healed in that eye.

As both a former decades-long mechanic and motorcyclist, eyepro is a woefully under-respected part of safety gear... I've personally exp'd a shard of steel the size of my fingernail embedding in safety glasses while grinding on a part... and of course, helmet visors catching rocks, bees, and steel tyre carcass bits, hours from medical attention. Kids are 'invulnerable' because they haven't exp'd their bodies failing them... yet. :D As Martin says... only one chance to eyepro.

Not related to this video, but Brady, will you ever make an engineering channel? Like computerphile but for mechanical, civil, electrical engineering etc. ? I am pretty sure the engineering departments at Nottingham and Oxford would have tons of interesting things to talk about.

From chemistry, to firearms, to industrial work, safety first and safety always.

Man, for years I didn't bother using safety glasses while working around the house, simply cause I found it too annoying to dig out the dusty, dirty old pair from the toolbox. This changed after adjusting an old chainsaw that I had gotten to run for the first time in 30 odd years. While test cutting, a tiny shard of wood lodged itself just barely in the white of the left eye... Spent ~10 min gently digging it out myself as it was shallow. After that, got myself a set of tinted safety glasses, and now I never leave home without wearing them... Simply cause I still can't be bothered to go digging through that toolbox for those old crappy ones. So, remember folks, safety first!

These guys even make the boring safety stuff not so boring, and actually pleasant to watch! Yes, safety is for sure a number one prerequisite, but from my experience it was just the teacher droning on and on.

This video really makes you wonder "why stop at safety glasses"? I wouldn't want high speed flying glass shrapnel entering my nose or mouth either. Why not wear full face masks?

Codys lab needs to see this

Even though the second test wasn't as dramatic, I imagine the steam (as seen in the slow-mo) would be enough to cause some problems to the unprotected "eyes". Thank you for the excellent demonstration.

Thank you gentlemen! So nice to see a group I respect very much on RU-vid promoting safety!

Elegantly simple, effective demonstration. Bravo! At least twice in my career I have been made thankful for having worn my safety glasses on a particular day. Thank you for spreading the word.

Thank you for doing this😄 until the first accident it seems alotta people don't take safety as seriously

I really love this kind of demonstration. It's important to really know what the consequences are of your work. I would love to see a better model with a face. Like one of the styrofoam heads you can get for example. And then I'd like to see splash demonstrations as well.

So many great educators on RU-vid! I wish there was away to organize these videos to make it easier for teachers and parents to link them to the subject they are currently working on. It’ll also give students with less access to education more options.

I have worked in chemistry, physics and biology labs since I was fifteen till nearly sixty. When safety glasses were available, I used them! I have my eyesight. Only once did a company not provide them. I got a frustule of diatomaceous earth in one eye. It caused a very small and exceedingly painful scratch on the surface of my eye. I did not see for a week or more. After that, I bought my own safety glasses and used them! Great video!!! Thank you.

There are bits of glass embedded in the ceiling in the lab at my work from a glass tube that was sealed up to run a reaction. It failed catastrophically as in this video. The engineer running the experiment escaped with his eyesight because he was wearing his safety glasses. We keep thr glass in thr ceiling tiles as a reminder.

😲 This will really protect a lot of pupils! 👀

one of my first experiences in chemistry was playing with a chemistry set at around age 7-8. rubber-Bunging a testtube firmly filled with copper-sulphate solution (one of those _safe_ chemistry sets), and heating it over a alcohol burner... amazing i can still see really.

I’m impressed that this video even exists on your channel. Thanks for sharing!

You should show what a drop of acid would do to an eyeball! HCl, H2SO4, and HNO3

This should be used for OSHA training.

This was a real eye opener. Will never look at safety glasses the same. Blinding clarity, really.

1:03 Now, once we have collected our eyeballs, we can see that...

Nice way to start the week. Thanks professor & the whole team.!!!

Important video but, to be honest, I came here to see Professor Poliakoff. You're the best, Professor!

I really hope this man gets to enjoy another 20 years of healthy wonderful life. He's a treasure.

I’ll never complain about wearing my safety glasses again.

May I add this to next semesters safety instructions?

Safety advice from the professor sounds so much more serious especially when supported by exploding tomatoes, I'd love if this could become a regular series somehow!

Always pleasure to watch periodic table videos. Big thanks to the great professor.

You definitely cannot use those again. Any time any piece of PPE has served its true purpose, i.e. taken the brunt of some sort of accident - it is always to be discarded. Very expensive gear such as safety harnesses or breathing protection has to be re-certified by an authorized tech, who will either restore it or discard it all together. This especially is true for helmets. If your bike or bicycle helmet, or hard-hat has visible cracks, marring or obvious sun-bleaching - *replace* *it* !

Required Viewing for anyone working in a lab.. (Please Neil; could you do it again with peeled soft boiled eggs.)

Hey Martyn, I had a talk from Ken Woodward OBE at my year in industry placement last week. He lost his sight because he didn’t put his goggles on. He would be a great guest at the uni and he’s a very inspirational speaker

I love the dramatic music and then you can hear Neil's laugh in the background when the explosion happens.

Hi sir my self veer , sir I have one request , sir can you make series of chemistry lectures like electro chemistry, chemical kinetics,etc ,because you explain in grate way. Sir, walter lewin sir also make physics lecturing video, sir i am final year bsc student so it make very help. If my English is wrong please sorry sir.

My teachers told us to put them on before you enter the lab and only put them down if we already left it. And you'd better obey that law.

This should be required watching in every chemistry/physics lab and mechanics workshop.

Thank you for highlighting the importance of eye protection! We totally agree! 90% of all eye injuries that send people to the emergency department could be prevented by common eye protection.

You know, this experiment and what it is trying to represent is somewhat misleading! This is CHEMICAL lab, it should be performed with *chemical safety goggles* and maybe ink in the tube instead of water, so that it can demonstrate where the liquid particles hit. Many people think that machine shop safety glasses, as used in the first demo (designed to protect from flying particles) are adequate. Chem labs must require the goggles with the soft face-conforming edges. They are more uncomfortable and fog up, so many students opt for the ones without the seal, which flying liquids can bypass. :/

Please stop this madness! How much longer shall vegetable cruelty go on!?!??

"Two of the tomatoes are wearing safety glasses"... best description of an experiment setup i've heard in a decade.

I managed to explode a drill bit in metalwork once, actually drilling the plastic for a handle, and by this time the bit was dull, someone behind wanted me to hurry up, so I just put a tiny bit more pressure on and... BANG! drill bit shrapnel rattled on the shield - and the teacher re-iterated that that's why you NEVER use the drill press without putting the shield down. This wasn't a small bit, but there wasn't a lot left of it afterwards

Pretty sure that safety squints are just as effective :)

Where's the Slow-mo guys when you need them?

Great demonstration. There are many youtubers who should take note (for some reason often eastern european) because the level of safety in all respects in their videos is extremely low or non-existent. Safety should be the first lesson in any laboratory or workshop based activity. This demo is excellent because it brings home the potential damage that can be done. You shouldn’t baulk at the “gruesomeness” of using animal tissue because some lessons can only be learned through shock tactics. This one however is extremely effective.

Exceptional demonstration of why everyone should wear Safety Gear/PPE. Thank you Professor P.

But I need my regular glasses to see.

TRIGGER WARNING - This video contains graphic scenes of Vegetable Abuse.

Seeing that glass shave and pierce the tomatoes gave me chills.

My dear Professor Poliakoff, thank you for this demonstration, I will use this in my safety meetings at work.

Who cares if your permanently blinded, at least you’ll be the coolest person in the room!

Excellent demonstration, love your channel. I wear safety glasses since I work with energetic compounds

Safety first and foremost. i grew up in my fathers workshop, and did a two apprenticeships, welding and fitting and turning. i was so gung ho as a kid, and was always off to ophthalmologist, having steel bits removed from my eyes, I wouldn't listen to the safety rules. fortunately for me i was lucky and escaped with no severe permanent damage. now days i literally wear safety glasses in the kitchen. i can tell you, from experience - it ain't fun having steel removed from your eyes - great vid - glad my tomatoes are still in one piece.

Happy Birthday Professor!!

Safety goggles are always a must, take care of them so they are clear and never scratched. Treat them like your baby and don't let them get scratched, that way you have no issues putting on a clear set. people will often take off safety goggles because they are dirty, foggy or scratched. If you have to put on a respirator, i highly recommend putting on a face shield too. respirators can sometimes push your safety glasses up at the nose, and leave gaps where you can get things in the eye. even then, a full face shield is a nice idea plenty of other times. I am not a chemist, but a steel worker. but the same basics apply.

You know it's a real science channel when there are replicates to fun explosive experiments

I remember I'd gone to a mine once to mine some amethyst when I was younger, and I didn't think to put glasses on. First strike into rock, and I feel something hit me in the eye. It wasn't too bad initially, so I put glasses on after that thinking everything was fine. Well we got back to the house we were staying at, and the pain just kept on getting worse and worse all night and I ended up spending that entire night rolling around on the floor due to the amount of pain I was in. Turns out part of the tool I was using had chipped and lodged a sliver of iron in my eye, and it had actually started to rust in my eye. Doctors were luckily able to remove it with a q-tip and a drill, but that was not a fun experience. Had to wear a patch for 2 weeks. My vision is okay now, but... It doesn't take long to mess yourself up.

Brilliant presentation. I'm a joiner who wears eye protection but, not as much as I should. I'm gonna try and wear them all the time.

I saw an image on Reddit or something once that illustrated this point well- it was a pair of safety glasses with a metal shard embedded in a lense, just barely short of touching the eye.

Great demonstration - and thanks for sparing us from the realism of real eyeballs!

One of my classmates made this mistake once, in a chemistry class. We were supposed to heat up the test tubes a little bit, then seal them. He sealed his first, then heated it. Went similarly to this, enormous bang, scared the shite out of me but luckily I was wearing goggles AND had my back turned from the other side of the classroom. He was also wearing goggles, but his hand still got hurt pretty badly (he was holding it in his bare hand).

My favorite professor!

Will be showing this to my students. Thank you. I've already demonstrated egg whites with concentrated HNO3

Prof and team, please do consider uploading videos in 4K for the sake of "rewatchability" of content in the near future. This will make sure that new viewers are able to view the greatest and best of the videos without compromise in the video's quality.

So glad to see someone else do a safety video, I haven't seen too many people do one.

Great demo! I love the idea of using tomatoes for a comparison.

Great demonstration, on how eye protection is so important.

Neil and the Professor dropping knowledge bombs. Literally.

Brilliant demo. Cheers lads.

we had a demo like this with harboiled eggs (with the shell removed), they're a bit bigger than eyes, but much closer in consistency

Simple et belle démonstration, valable pour tous les pays et de nombreuses activités. Incluant la Chimie, l'électricité, le travail sur tout ce qui peut envoyer des éclats de verre de métal ou tout autre substance solide ou caustique. Merci mon cher Professeur!

I predict a lot of sharing of this video amongst teachers, and students going to higher education... Heck, this might need to be added to the opening course notes... Great video guys.

Reminds me of the sublime feeling that came over me after exploding my first prince rupert's drop with a friend. The fantastic explosion managed to land glass shards BEHIND our safety glasses. The drop was carefully (but casually) placed on the carpet beneath my rear windshield- not even in a bag or box- and driven 200 miles from the city where it was made before we exploded it... Foolish! "Hindsight is 20/20" until you loose your sight.

Last dialogue was great

I won't be surprised if this video became a mandatory video to watch in laboratory orientations