Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work with" Series in RSS

From the "Higher States of Bromine" article:

> What's the name for the compound shown at right? [BrC2O4F3] Very few of us will have the need to name it, though - you make that one by condensing trifluoroacetic anhydride onto the bromyl fluoride at -196C, then warming and recrystallizing the solid from liquified freon to give yellow crystals. Those melt at -12C, and according to the paper and its SI, [...] and "inevitably explodes upon further warming". Further experimentation runs a risk of exposure to further inevitabilities, and I'm glad that Prof. Seppelt's expertise in the lab got him through all this.

> The SI strongly warns readers that the preparations therein must not under any circumstances be scaled up, and that is clearly the advice of someone who has has your best interests at heart.

Never mind Prof. Seppelt (who conveniently survived to publish his research) - what are the actuaries saying about his grad students, postdocs, and sundry assistants wearing those cheap red lab coats?

I know articles from Derek Lowe's series pop up on here every now and then. Here is a RSS feed you can pu in your RSS reader, and have all 33 articles available to (re) read. Enjoy !

(Alternatively, you can find all these articles in HTML here : https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...)