Lab-ways jist ain’t what they were #1: Back when my dad was a college student, just after WW2, junior research scientists couldn’t necessarily afford even basic equipment, and the departments they were attached to didn’t necessarily have it to supply, or even lend. If in the course of a chemistry experiment you needed glass containers or tubing, there was a discount alternative: you went down to the local glassworks and BLEW YOUR OWN!! This involved dabbing your little airpipe into the white glowing mass, swirling the right-sized blob onto the end, and inflating it like a balloon as it cooled and changed from extreme malleable to brittle. You got the exact shape you wanted by v.careful application of (ungloved) fingertips – and you cooled the latter on your EARLOBES!! Easy enough to start again if you didn’t get what you wanted, but presumably at least some researchers ran out of time and had to go back to their lab experiment with the weirdest botched bottles and phials and wonky tubes – I KNOW I WOULD!! (*heats up colleague’s retort stand w.bunsen burner while he’s out of the room*)