Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)
science.org
science.org
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
Similar compounds have been used as chemical weapons before but eventually give way to more modern agents.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
Interestingly, it's more stable than most online sources give it credit for
I just find it hard to believe that a renown lab specialzing in highly explosive compounds had this stuff explode when turning on the spectrometer, but he could hit it with a hammer.
I don't assume malice on either part, so the best explanation for me is that they were testing different things.
Given that he did it using a different synthesis using public shop grade starting materials in his garage and having no equipment to really verify his intermidiates and final compound it also seems likely. Also this is not addressed in the video. The video is popular/humorous science and not research afterall.
I'm actually a bit baffled that this video is taken at face value as disproving the labs original publication. But I also can't put the 1.5 Joule part in relation and a spectrometer creates more force than a soft hit from a hammer?
> The biggest stinker I have run across... Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the metaphysical stench of this material.
Here's a stinky selenium anecdote from when I was a kid. In those days I used to build electronic projects out of parts from war surplus equipment. This was before the time when silicon diode rectifiers were cheap enough to buy on a kid's pocket money (especially so the high current variety), so the fallback was either vacuum tubes or selenium rectifiers.
Anyway, selenium rectifiers were cheap and plentiful except that I didn't have easy access to the high current variety. This led to the rectifiers often being overloaded and sometimes failing catastrophically. It turns out that in their death throes selenium rectifiers emit the most horrible pungent stink somewhat akin to hydrogen sulphide, however once one becomes familiar with the stench there's no mistaking it for H2S.
I've been known to stink the house out much to my mother's chagrin. Yes, even back then I was aware that these selenium fumes were toxic so I did exercise some care but it'd not have passed any of today's occupational health standards.
BTW, selenium rectifiers can be remarkably tolerant of overload and abuse, moreover they warn you when overstressed or they're about to fail as they begin to stink to high heaven.
https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jklein2/O2F2.pdf
If I wanted to synthesize this stuff, I think my preferred method would be SCP-294
I'm curious as to what a "safe distance" is when requesting a cup of anti-water. Reacting 8 ounces of antimatter with a similar amount of matter releases energy on the order of a large thermonuclear bomb.
The link intrigued me to click but unfortunately it 404ed. That led me to hunt down the list, and I found this snippet on an Royal Society of Chemistry page [0]:
“Sir Humphry Davy, Louis-Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard all suffered intensely from the effects of inhaling hydrogen fluoride. Davy suffered injury to his eyes and fingernails. George Knox and his brother, Thomas Knox, both suffered from hydrofluoric acid poisoning. Thomas Knox nearly died. Paul Louyet and Jerome Nickles died during their investigations, presumably due to the effects of inhaling HF.”
[0]: https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-discovery-of-fluorine/202024...
That book describes a number of approaches with beryllium: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612/page/n201/mode/2...
> Recently they have been experimenting with beryllium instead of aluminum. Combustion efficiency with these propellants, particularly the beryllium-based ones, is bound to be bad, since the chamber temperature is comparatively low. ... About all it proves is the willingness of rocket people to try anything, no matter how implausible, if they can con NASA or one of the services into paying for it. ...
> When the combustion difficulties are added to the toxicity of BeO and the price of beryllium, there isn’t really much point in continuing with it.
and with fluorine, in the liquid form: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612/page/n39/mode/2u...
> The optimum oxidizer is liquid oxygen. (“Fluorine might be good, but its density is too low, and it’s a holy terror to handle.”)
and in an oxidizer that can decompose: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612/page/n87/mode/2u...
> O2F2 [FOOF] had been reported but was unstable at room temperature ... [a list of other compounds, concluding] ... So ClF3 it had to be. ... It is also quite probably the most vigorous fluorinating agent in existence-much more vigorous than fluorine itself. Gaseous fluorine, of course, is much more dilute than the liquid ClF3, and liquid fluorine is so cold that its activity is very much reduced.
The next page (p74) describes an industrial accident with it, then its use in aerospace:
> The results were excellent, but the difficulties were infuriating. Ignition was beautiful —so smooth that it was like turning on a hose. Performance was high—very close to theoretical. And the reaction was so fast that you could burn it in a surprisingly small chamber. But. If your hardware was dirty, and there was a smear of oil or grease somewhere inside a feed line, said feed line would ignite and cleverly reduce itself to ashes. Gaskets and O-rings generally had to be of metal; no organic material could be restrained from ignition. Teflon would stand up under static conditions, but if the CTF flowed over it with any speed at all, it would erode away like so much sugar in hot water, even if it didn’t ignite. So joints had to be welded whenever possible, and the welds had to be good ...
and that's before getting to the "real difficulties."
Stross certainly read "Ignition!" before writing that short story - https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/there_i... .
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The one on chlorine trifluoride (linked in OP, but fixed link) is also really good: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...
Good lord
Fantastic! I can see where Derek Lowe got his writing style inspiration.
Today, he writes about the world of medicines. His Twitter feed is excellent if you want to know more about some of the finer details about COVID related medicines: https://twitter.com/dereklowe?s=21.
Recipes about Satan’s Kimchi are irresistible.
Suffice to say it ended up on the evening news because a residential area had to be evacuated.
I’m sure the actual users read these things thoroughly, and the second point is called out above, but that ___really___ buries the lede.
;-)
But it wasn’t always so. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin
> In 1967/1968, Resolution 3 of the 13th CGPM renamed the unit increment of thermodynamic temperature "kelvin", symbol K, replacing "degree Kelvin", symbol °K.
And from Lord Kelvin himself in his "On an Absolute Thermometric Scale", a copy of which is at https://web.archive.org/web/20080201095927/http://zapatopi.n...
> The characteristic property of the scale which I now propose is, that all degrees have the same value; that is, that a unit of heat descending from a body A at the temperature T° of this scale, to a body B at the temperature (T-1)°, would give out the same mechanical effect, whatever be the number T. This may justly be termed an absolute scale, since its characteristic is quite independent of the physical properties of any specific substance.
So even Lord Kelvin himself was originally speaking of degrees in his absolute scale.
Which is particularly relevant given the usage is within a quote of a 1962 paper
https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...
Are there any other onomatopoeic chemicals out there?
My favorite is probably Arsole, which has an apt diagram: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Arsole.p...
1. The first question is how detectable is thioacetone to the human nose, that is how many molecules are actually needed before someone can actually detect it? The second is, is thioacetone the most detectable molecule known to us, if not then what is it?
It seems to me these are important questions for various reasons. Determining the absolute sensitivity or limiting resolution of our sense of smell could be tied up with out ability to detect† thioacetone. Then there's the question of how our sense of smell compares with other animals, dogs for instance. Dogs are renown for their acute sense of smell and we know they have many more smell receptors hence the acuity of their sense compared with humans. My question is do dogs' receptors have the same level of resolution (molecules versus detection) as do humans and does that change from molecule to molecule? Experts please let us know.
If these facts are still not well understood then perhaps thioacetone may be a good research tool for the purpose.
† Incidentally, it seems to me we've a similar issue with our ability to taste stuff, for instance, the chemical denatonium (Bitrex) is the most bitter substance known to humans and humans can detect it in extremely small amounts. However, the extreme sensitivity of humans to the chemical doesn't necessarily apply to other animals, rats for instance, which makes it a good denaturant for rat poisons, etc.
2. The matter of dilution. It seems to me that our experience of dilution is a bit like exponentiation in that our human sense of scale doesn't work very well when things change at exponential rates. Exponentiation often catches up with us because its effects/actions are 'outside' our normal daily (human) experience. Well, I reckon dilution is a bit like that (certainly so at the edges).
We often wash stuff away until there's seemingly nothing left of it and we think it's gone but as chemists know this is often far from being the case. I learned this the hard way as a kid when doing photography after I'd failed to leave my prints in running water sufficient time to wash away all the hypo (if I recall the recommended washing time was 5 minutes and I only washed for about a third that time). The prints looked perfectly OK for some hours afterwards but by the next day, they'd gone a horrible brown color. A lesson learned: insufficient removal of unwanted chemical can be problematic even when there's seemingly precious little or no obvious trace of it left. The fact is it's often very difficult to dilute stuff to the point where its effect is truly negligible.
It seems to me that in daily life we've very little idea of (and pay very little attention to) the amount of unwanted stuff that remains after we, say, have washed something clean. In practice we've very little idea of how much of residual chemical remains in a container after it's been washed and cleaned and is eventually transferred to a new and different solution when the container is reused. Getting a feel for cleanliness, purity and impurity of substances, residues etc. is a lot harder than it seems for we fail to consider the fact that there are a great deal more molecules involved in processes than we can actually comprehend (or are cognizant of in the mental sense). That is, if something is diluted well past the point where we can see or smell it then we've a tendency to assume that very little or nothing of consequence remains whether it's in fact true or not.
It seems to me that thioacetone is almost the quintessential chemical to demonstrate dilution, impurity, presence of residual molecules etc. by virtue of the fact that it's so easily detectable in only trace amounts. The fact that it isn't dangerous at levels long past where humans can detect it—and given how bad it actually smells would make it useful (and very memorable) for such training exercises.
No doubt strict protocols would apply to the conducting of such lessons.
link is 404 =(
[0]https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/dhmo.htm
[Edit] tough crowd tonight.
Keep living the dream.
There are countless people out there who know nothing of chemistry and this is a great way to make a point, or make them laugh dependent on the framing.
http://dhmo.org/ has always been my go to URL.
The insult was for abusing that catalogue and falsely claiming they could commercially produce and ship something that they could not, and I think it was fairly deserved. I don't really see any sort of racial dogwhistles or subtext here, this reads like a small snipe over questionable business practices.