nextian:

bigbigtruck:

Scary and fascinating posts about toxic substances on a chemistry blog.

“It turns out that brutal treatments like, say, touching [titanium tetraazide] with a spatula, or cooling down a vial of it in liquid nitrogen - you know, rough handling - make it detonate violently. I think that staring hard at it is OK, though… [with] goggles, blast shield, face shield, leather suit (!) and ear plugs. “

…

“[Ozonides] tend to have a lot of electron density on them, and bonding between them is a careful, arm’s-length affair, sort of like porcupines mating. “

…

“You can… distill out the perchloric anhydride (dichlorine heptoxide) if you have no sense whatsoever. It’s 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.”

My chemistry knowledge is almost nil (college 101 courses are way in the past), but this is still a pretty friendly read. Cool stuff.

This is really great.

Not that it’s what you’d call a perfect compound in that regard - despite a lot of effort, it’s still not quite ready to be hauled around in trucks. There’s a recent report of a method to make a more stable form of it, by mixing it with TNT. Yes, this is an example of something that becomes less explosive as a one-to-one cocrystal with TNT. Although, as the authors point out, if you heat those crystals up the two components separate out, and you’re left with crystals of pure CL-20 soaking in liquid TNT, a situation that will heighten your awareness of the fleeting nature of life.

Why klutzes like me should never go into chemistry.