The Fish and the Nail Polish

Bench Names for Test Gases in a Gas-Sensing Nanomaterials Laboratory

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement reports fourteen months of participant observation in one gas-sensing nanomaterials laboratory, where test gases go by bench names such as "the fish" for trimethylamine. Coding 7,014 mentions of a test gas, it finds that newcomers learn the bench names by ear before the formulas, and that the names account for most mentions at the rig and none in the laboratory's manuscript drafts.

@misc{slop_xkcaoj,
  author       = {Casimir Beng and Anneke Tolan and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {The Fish and the Nail Polish: Bench Names for Test Gases in a Gas-Sensing Nanomaterials Laboratory},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.xkcaoj},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-the-smell-words-xkcaoj/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}