Have you not played Dwarf Fortress? Frame rate goes way down, a situation imperceptible to the dorfs. Then eventually the operator of the machine looses interest, or a oandemic makes the pop count drop, or a combo of those.
Edit; You should read some Greg Egan if you're into this question.
Had to do a flame test to identify old fuel for recycling.
Made blue dye from indigo, and red and orange dye from madder, mixing in alum and other things. Making blue is amazing, it comes out green then changes colour all at once. Get the mix wrong and you get the wrong colour.... Also we boiled one batch of madder and got orange instead of scarlet, so even the temperature had to be regulated.
Most recently, been making etched plates from the inside of soft drink cans, etching with copper sulfate (they sell it in Bunnings as a fertiliser). Lots of fun!
So yeah mostly art projects.
That said even baking a cake is pretty fancy chemistry.