Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride | Hacker News Reader

Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride

pipeline.corante.com

202 pointstimr50 comments

I've never had much interest in chemistry, but after reading this article, I found myself digging through the archives. And then I found myself thinking, "Chlorine Trifluoride is scary stuff! He says that's because it's a damned impressive oxidizing agent. What exactly does it mean to be an 'oxidizing agent' anyways? Hmm..." I'm now sorely tempted to spend the remainder of my day sifting through chemistry stuff online.

This is exactly the kind of writing that the scientific community needs. This is outreach and recruitment at its finest, and we could use a lot more of it. People ask, "How do we get kids interested in science?" Prof. Lowe's blog isn't the entire answer, but it's a hell of a good start.

Correction: As noted below, Dr. Lowe is not a professor. My error, but everything else still stands.

How do you get kids interested in science? With chemistry, it's always been to "blow shit up!" Fond memories of my HS chem teacher because of his penchant to do just that. I had way more fun with computers, but chemistry was an option (until organic chemistry in college...shudder).

For me, the pain of ochem really depended on the instructor. Where I went to college, it really felt like 90% of the ochem instructors were either bad teachers or liked to watch students struggle. It was otherwise pretty easy material--if you had a good teacher.

From the shear number of horror stories about ochem and my own experience, I'd say most ochem professors are just bad teachers and don't care about their students.

Mmmm, he's a corporate pharmaceutical researcher with a PhD and not an academic, so while you can call him "Dr." he's not a "Prof."

Speaking of things the scientific community needs: less academic snobbery.

That's not snobbery, it's simple (but understandable) inaccuracy. Most people don't know that "Prof" is a job title, "Dr" is a qualification (specifically a degree). You can be either without the other - I know a Prof without a doctorate.

It's akin to confusing a linguist with a polyglot, a top-level accountant with a research mathematician, or someone who writes HTML with someone who programs in Python. They are simply different. Not getting it right is either a mistake, or a demonstration of lack of knowledge of the difference.

EDIT: Added the first parenthetical clause.

For the record, it was a simple mistake. I read the article, glanced at his bio on the left, saw that he led with his academic credentials, and incorrectly inferred a teaching position.

I'd like to say 'Thank You' to the HN community for brutally enforcing both clarity and accuracy. You guys are the best proofreaders ever.

I hope you don't feel too bruised, and my apologies if I contributed to it. I tried to make it clear that it is, as I said, a common and understandable mistake.

Not at all, the thanks are sincere. There's enough sloppy thinking out there, I'd rather not add to it.

no. The analogy would be someone that codes python for his job and someone who teachs python at the u.

And people that teachs despises people that "work" and vice versa.

Most of my friends despises people that teachs ("they suck on research funding for useless purposes") while most of my wife's friends despise people that sell they work on the corporate space ("they do not create any new knowledge").

I personaly think that both are right as they understand the political game at hand and play it.

It's actually surprisingly decent for the most part, one of the main positive changes scientific academic culture's made from traditional academic culture. If you look at 19th-century journals, you can always tell who has a Ph.D. or often even who's won various awards or been granted various honors, because they put all their titles and postnomials wherever they can. Some areas of the humanities still put authors' credentials in the author line and on their badges at conferences, but in most scientific journals you have no idea just by reading the paper which of the names are grad students vs. professors vs. research scientists.

(One exception is the IEEE, which puts author bios with their academic pedigree and current position at the end of every paper, and attaches "IEEE Fellow" in the author list to those authors who are IEEE Fellows.)

In my admittedly limited experience as an interested layman, it seems to have swung to an opposing extreme, if anything. I've come to associate plastering degrees and qualifications all over with someone being a borderline crackpot, while things written by the truly impressive people tend to do little more than give their name and where they work.

I mean, seriously. When was the last time you saw something say "Dr. Knuth"?

When was the last time you saw something say "Dr. Knuth"?

You won't see that very often -- Knuth is particular about including first names (or rather, their initials). He got quite upset with me when I wanted to be "Colin Percival" rather than "Colin A. Percival"...

That said, you will see "Dr. D.E.Knuth" in any sort of formal situation (e.g., a visiting lecture); even if "Knuth" by itself is enough, it's simple politeness to provide a full title.

Flourine is nasty stuff, period.

I'll be reading through the archives of this blog, for the same reasons that I tracked down a PDF copy of the late John Clark's book 'Ignition', which is a history of rocket fuel. Note that an actual copy of the book itself is a collectors' item and sells for around $400; believe you me, if I could pick one of these up out of the bargain bin at Walgreens, I would.

Here's his description of the lovely Chlorine Triflouride:

”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

You got all that from the Wiki page? :-)

There was a time when there were chemistry sets for sale as gifts to kids ... Mostly rather mild stuff - pretty colors, bad smells, melted plastic.

This is hard core chemistry lab. Choice bit on a particularly explosive paper:

If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic.

P.S. the URL posted is not for the exact piece which is currently at the top; that's http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_won...

P.P.S. don't miss out on the comments - some are as amusing as the post, and there's even a call for a web business at #46 ...

Chemists in general are a crazy lot.

I once worked in a lab where my job was to dispose of chemicals and clean out beakers and glassware (a dishwasher). Sometimes we needed to use concentrated sulfuric acid to clean out the particularly nasty stuff when regular detergent wouldn't cut it.

One drop of this stuff will make your skin peel off and fall into the sink; one splash could blind you.

I was always donned in a lab coat, thick gloves, safety glasses, etc. but my professor used just his bare hands, rotating the glassware so that the liquid would touch all surfaces. Meanwhile, I would watch in awe and wonder. Awe, because he was cocky enough to do this knowing the risks, and wonder, that he was still alive in once piece.

Well, [organic] chemists are "famous" for low average life span.

I heard claims that the life expectancy was much better these days, but the person making the claim had an obvious interest in selling people on doing more courses in the subject. (And the subject is fun; if it had been possible for me, I would have done more org chem.)

Well, there's a reason why the founder crew working here at Timetric are all ex-theoretical chemists...

...ish, anyway. I'm a mineralogist by training, which exposes you to a different set of scary stuff. X-rays, neutron beams, bandsaws, and in my own oh-God-close-escape moment, cryogenic gases - a mishap during a calorimetry experiment leading to a canister of liquid N2 gushing out through a broken pressure hose.

All kids' play compared to this stuff, though; neutrons will kill you dead but there are so many safety interconnects and film-badge radiation detectors that you'd have to actually want to get hurt. Organic chemists are hardcore.

My wife, a chemistry Ph.D. turned stay-at-home-mom, loves the “Things I Won’t Work With” series. It brings back fond memories of all the bench-top fires she was responsible for as a grad student.

My favorite line from his blog is "[Perchloric acid] is a liquid with a boiling point of around 80 C, and I'd like to shake the hand of whoever determined that property, assuming he has one left."

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/30/things_i_won...

A quick google search reveals that this stuff reacts with xenon. Nasty, indeed.

I'm so thankful chemical warfare did not become widely practiced. There are some truly horrible substances out there.

Many of which are available on the dollar menu at Taco Bell.

So that's what "mustard gas" is.

No, it reacts and becomes "mustard gas" about 8 hours later...

Chlorine trifluoride http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa... is still my favorite.

That stuff will burn cement and rocks! And I do mean burn, and not dissolve or anything else.

Good stuff. For those who haven't seen them, the Periodic Table of Videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos#p/u/17/pPdevJTGAY...) are entertaining.

"satan's kimchi"

It is funny that you mention that since I commonly refer to kimchi itself as "Satan's salad". I've never read a chemistry article that was this entertaining.

Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens...and 433 kcal

433 kilocalaries from 5 molecules? Am I reading that right?

It gives 433 kcal/mol, i. e. 433 kilocalories from 5 * 6.02E23 molecules. It is approximately 68g FOOF and 132g HS. (about 2oz and 5oz respectively)

Is that a lot? The same amount of fat can be burned for more energy?

Yes, but what's important is the rate. Power is the measure of calories per hour (or joules per second). Fat (and food in general) is extremely energy dense, but that energy can only be released relatively slowly.

This is the same reason why TNT is used for demolition while gasoline is used for engines. Gasoline delivers 15 times the energy of an equal weight of TNT, but TNT's energy release is much more rapid (it can also do so without air, the other big reason for blowing things up with TNT).

It's not just that it's a lot of energy, but also that it's being released all at once, and into just 200g of matter. It's not all heat energy, either; an uncomfortably large portion of the energy is released as an explosion!

Yeah, that made me do a double-take too. Can you imagine what a gram of the stuff would do?

That's why he was laughing at the fact that a company is apparently willing to sell and ship it in kilos.

He's probably talking about mols of the stuff.

Tangentially related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F00f

That was a very entertaining read. That blog is going on my reading list for sure.

Wow what great science writing. He made it sound incredibly cool, and normal at the same time. Like somebody talking about car racing.

Now I want to go and look up all this stuff.

Ha ha! Nice!

I was a chemistry geek in high school, with a penchant for highly exothermic reactions if you know what I mean. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Hilarious article. I'm always a bit disappointed by how little overlap there is between the chemistry and hacker communities though. cf. comments like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149075

Quick question. How in the heck can you make a high explosive at 700C that has a nasty tendency to react with stuff and explode at -180C? Wouldn't it explode before you've actually made it?

Keep it away from anything it might react with.

I wonder how it reacts with Fluoride Divanadium, also known as FDiV.

I wonder if this Dioxygen Difluoride + Hydrogen Sulfide reaction could be harnessed as an ultra-dense fuel source for an internal combustion engine.

Neither of those chemicals is particularly dense, and as a bonus HS is incredibly poisonous. Just so you have something to worry about in both propellant tanks.

There are propellants that give you more zing per gram than a gasoline/air mixture, but the improvement is not that great. Gasoline is near the limit of energy density for practical chemical fuels - see http://physics.info/energy-chemical/

- First the fuel source would need to be kept at -160C or so, which is difficult, and would be decidedly impressive upon failure. - Second, one of the reaction products is HF gas. If this doesn't mean anything to you, note that HF gas was the -first- substance covered in the "Things I won't work with" category. "And that soaks into tissue very readily, with the acid part doing its damage along the way, and the fluoride merrily poisoning enzymes and wreaking havoc."

Sounds like a win-win

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