Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by paranoidrobot | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

paranoidrobot

(2019)

This is from Derek Lowe's wonderful "Things I won't work with" series from his long running blog.

Even if you're not a chemistry person, it's written in an accessible way, and usually quite humorous way.

I recommend his 2010 post on "FOOF" Dioxygen Difluoride from the same series.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

View on HN

If you want to read an amazing book from someone who sails the other tack and lovingly creates rocket propellants: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

This is such a good book, and it was very accessible as someone with little chemistry education.

Yeah. The earlier, more famous posts of the blog on the article were about stuff that this book gives up on using because it just can't be contained and similar.

Then the blog goes into more and more dangerous stuff...

The silver lining is that the more dangerous a substance it, the lower the odds of it actually harming anybody, because everybody reacts like the author.

'reacts'. Violently.

Always puts me in the mood to read the imitable "Excuse me sir, would you like to buy a kilo of isopropyl bromide"

Thanks, I needed to read Gegel again! http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopr...

I know nothing from chemistry apart from high school stuff decades ago (and wasnt very good at it), but oh boy Derek knows how to write interesting stuff for laymen, read whole series since it gets quite regular mentions here.

This is how you make people interested in more difficult topics

My high school chemistry teacher used this approach, and I thank her for it. While maybe not at the same level of chemist, she did her best to make the subject much more approachable. My physics teacher had his humorous approach as well. I can still see his hand drawn sketches on the overhead in my mind.

I love how many of those blog posts are triggered by German articles. German chemistry: the best outcome is setting grant money ablaze.

https://www.uni-muenster.de/news/view.php?cmdid=13282

sometimes the students are also set ablaze, 20 at once is actually rather impressive

Ah yes the timeless classic which at the end calls out an idiot company for offering something that explodes at -180C in commercial quantities :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com