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silliest thing you;ve carried on a plane 8-Apr-2010 At 12:40:27 PM JamieF

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Not so much a silly thing to carry, but an interesting exchange to justify it to airport security.

As an undergrad student in the late nineties, I went from Sydney to Brisbane to learn peptide synthesis at UQ. I took all the dry chemicals (amino acids, resins) with me in glass vials inside a box as hand luggage. Security saw all this powder in small bottles on the scanner.

Security guy: What's that?
Me: Stuff for peptide synthesis.
Security guy: But what is it?
Me: Amino acids.
Security guy: Acids? You can't take acids on a plane!
Me: No, you misunderstand, these aren't corrosive or dangerous.
Security guy: Well then what are they?
Me: They are the basic building block of proteins.
Security guy: You mean like meat?
Me: Well, sure, I guess.
Security guy: So they are foodstuffs then.
Me: Ah, yes.
Security guy: Oh, well that's OK then.

He then put a big fluoro "checked by security" sticker on the box and off I went. We never even opened the box.