What’s the most expensive piece of glassware you ever broke?

My son texted me a bit upset this morning because he broke a beaker in his high school chemistry lab and brother can all we chemists tell him some stories

What’s the biggest / most expensive piece of glassware you’ve ever broken? pic.twitter.com/tIujO4qGCm

— Keith Hornberger (@KRHornberger) March 6, 2024

Source - Buchi

And from there the chemists happily obliged, telling tales of broken 20L flasks (like the one shown to the right from Buchi which doesn't look like much until you realize that it's 20 liters (or about 9 gallons) in size and costs about $1500.)

I don't have anything remotely approaching that in my career, but I also didn't do that much lab work beyond undergrad at Wabash. During that time, the biggest break I had was probably a pyrex (note, not Pyrex) casserole that was being used as a sand bath for heating a round-bottom flask at the time.