24 ms·
Things I Won’t Work With: Peroxide Peroxides (2014)
- labster 10y ago(2014) Entertaining, as always.
- sampo 10y agoI think this is my favorite of the series: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI'm a big fan of http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi..., if only for the call-out of a chemical supplier that claims to sell the stuff by the buttload. Second favorite goes to http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2006/05/30/things_i_wont_work_with_frisky_perchlorates http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2006/05/30/thi..., if only for the phrase "I’d like to shake the hand of whoever determined that property, assuming he has one left."
- yk 10y agoThat one has my favorite chemistry quote: At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature.
- gozur88 10y agoFluorine is in almost every chemistry joke. That's not a good sign if you need to handle it.
- jhou2 10y agoMy favorite line, "FOOF is Satan's kimchi."
- walrus01 10y agointeresting fact: a butt is an actual unit of measurement, so there really is such a thing as a buttload. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_(unit)
- flyinghamster 10y agoMy favorite: "I’d call for all the chemists who’ve ever worked with a hexanitro compound to raise their hands, but that might be assuming too much about the limb-to-chemist ratio." from: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/thi...
- bonzini 10y agoThe same guy also prepared O4F2 (FOOOOF) and made it react with ozone (http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/v66-221 http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/v66-221): > At 116 K (melting point of Freon-12), tetraoxygen difluoride decomposes and, if there is contact with concentrated ozone, both explode. No shit Sherlock. :) Strangely enough, I cannot find any paper about Streng doing explosive reactions with O3F2.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoAnother candidate for best quote is in his article on ozone products: > In general, we chemists shy away from compounds with lots of single bonds between the elements on the right-hand side of the periodic table. Those guys 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.
- js2 10y agoI was hoping it was Sand Won't Save You This Time and was not dissappointed.
- mjevans 10y agoYup, that's how I found this guy's blog the first time. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...
- pmiller2 10y agoYou've got to respect something that will burn stuff that's already burnt.
- themartorana 10y agoThat's a line I will use in the future. Well done.
- kbenson 10y agoThis comment is awesome: Ah, the old sand bucket. Was out in the hall outside the undergraduate labs. Might have been there since benzene was linear. Top was decorated with cigarette butts, dried gum, bits of paper. Then one day down the hall the THF still is being cleaned out – long over due. Thick clumps of whatever ketyl becomes. Inside, a bright shiny prize of sodium metal that disagrees with the optimistic and impatient grad student’s use of straight ethanol as cleaning aid. Fire erupts. Extinguished by CO2. Humid day, icy glass, beads of water form and follow gravity down. Into and onto sodium metal. Fire erupts. Extinguished by CO2. Repeat several times until it dawns that CO2 will eventually run out. Send terrified lab mate down the hall to fetch savior: sand bucket! Weight of bucket: about 200 lbs. Skinny grad student risks hernia rushing it back to lab, arrives exhausted, collapses in victory like Pheidippides. Firefighting grad student drops damned CO2 tank, plunges bare hand into sand bucket. Screams in pain – sand has been accreted by age into protoconcrete, impermeable to human flesh, spatulae, metal rulers, etc. Fire meanwhile burns itself out. Sand bucket replaced for next sucker.
- MaysonL 10y agomuch more difficult to handle than fluorine gas
- marklyon 10y agoIf you've not had the pleasure, take some time this weekend to read John D Clark's amazing book Ignition! https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd... (PDF may not render properly in Chrome)
- mjevans 10y agoIt would have been nice if someone had linked me to that while I was still in HS, though I couldn't take both the tech path and the chemistry class; would have been wonderful.
- WalterBright 10y agoI loved the dry humor in it. I generally find chemistry boring, but this book was not at all boring, though it was all about chemistry.
- davidgerard 10y agoIt makes it clear that "rocket science" is not actually about Newton's laws, but about incredibly evil chemistry.
- marcosdumay 10y agoIt's also about creating machines with the minimum possible safety margin added. And huge machines, by the way. It's also about assembling huge teams, and yet keeping all their data in secret. It's also about extremely reliable electronics/software that must survive on the some of the last hospitable environments available, but must not ever get any maintenance. It's about a huge set of incredibly hard problems. Every one fascinating.
- type0 10y agoChemistry is a fascinating subject, people who don't like it become that way mostly because of terrible teachers, it's also my own experience. If you study chemistry on your own you will find it's much more fun and useful for understanding the world, many aspects of our whole modern society exists thanks to chemistry, i wish more people opened their eyes to it. Here are some fun podcasts to listen: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcasts/ http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcasts/
- flashman 10y agoI never tire of seeing this series reposted. I only wish he'd written more since 2014.
- kaybe 10y agoThere is probably only so much he won't work with.
- ajmurmann 10y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9021919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9021919
- WalterBright 10y agoHe mentions the Me-163, which used peroxide. A fuel leak would dissolve the pilot.
- yxhuvud 10y agoIt is more probable that the pilot would be violently redistributed in the atmosphere.
- masklinn 10y agoYeah I doubt it used oxidizer to refrigerate the cabin so an averaging of the pilot/atmosphere ratio seems more likely than a dissolution oxidizer leak[0]. And it would probably set the pilot on fire rather than dissolve it: > Because of its extreme oxidizing potential, T-Stoff was a very dangerous chemical to handle, so special rubberized suits were required when working with it, as it would react with most cloth, leather, or other combustible material and cause it to spontaneously combust. At 57% methanol and 30% hydrazine hydrate (by weight), the reductant wasn't exactly innocuous either. [0] even more so as the reductant and oxidizer were picked for their hypergolic combination, ground explosion is not unheard of for 163.
- WalterBright 10y agoThat happened a lot, too. (I read a book on the 163.) The Me-163 killed many more Luftwaffe pilots than Allied.
- xlayn 10y agoThere are things that we shouln't work with, but we do because we don't know the associated risk, some examples: -maintenance of your DOT4 brakes? do not touch the DOT4 brake fuild, it's absorbed though your skin and it will kill your kidneys when they try to filter it. -Old house in america? check you don't have any pipe soldered with lead, hot water will eventually make it evaporate -lead in electrical solder wire -mercury, a powerful neuro-toxin Edit: -again, old house, check to change the paint, yep, lead in the pain again. -close to an airport? beside noise, lead in the airplanes fuel -Teflon... again Dupont and 3M -Aluminum on cookware... toxic lead was one of the technical debts introduced by a guy (1)... the same guy who introduce it to the fuel making a generation at least 10 iq point less smart.... and created the CFCs in aerosol... Dupont, GM and others did a lot of money on that.... as always. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.
- YZF 10y agoPretty sure the lead in solder is not a huge concern for occasional random use. Wash your hands and don't breath the fumes...
- refurb 10y agoPretty sure metallic mercury isn't that toxic unless you inhale the vapors. Mercury salts or organomercury compounds are MUCH more toxic. Pretty sure DOT4 brake fluid isn't that toxic.
- marcosdumay 10y agoMercury is different because it does emit vapors at usual temperature ranges. Very little vapor, but long term exposition can be damaging, even if you don't ever touch it.
- sean-duffy 10y agoThe fumes don't contain lead as it has a very high boiling point. The flux can be in the fumes though, which can be harmful.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThis is a fun 2 minutes if you enjoyed that blog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6MfZbCvPCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6MfZbCvPCw
- kristianp 10y agoWhy chain-mail gloves? I guess it would react with plastic gloves, but wouldn't some peroxide get through the gaps in the chain-mail?
- kazinator 10y agoI'm also curious. If the peroxide explodes, a layer of chain mail could protect against cuts from the shrapnel, I suppose?
- epmos 10y agoI'm guessing, but since in other contexts metals are used as a catalyst to decompose HOOH I suspect that it protects your hands from direct exposure. This would release a lot of heat, but that's likely better for you.
- dredmorbius 10y agoChainmail strikes me as more useful for kinetic than chemical protection. E.g., when the experiment blows up in your hands (or near them).
- iSnow 10y agoWith chain-mail gloves, there's a decent chance you still have hands after the explosion.
- CriminallyInane 10y agoisn't that the joke...? It wouldn't do anything to help but "Part of the purpose, I believe, was to make you think very carefully about what you were doing as you put them on"
- sevenless 10y agoWell, at least it keeps your hand in one piece for the surgeons to reattach.
- jandrese 10y agoI think the primary purpose is to keep the hot glass shards from shredding your skin. I'm guessing you wear standard rubber/plastic gloves underneath the chainmail to protect against the heat and chemicals.
- xbryanx 10y agoIs Corante no more?
- jloughry 10y agoDr Lowe moved everything from Corante to Science including the archives. Not too long ago. Corante was having too many technical problems.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'm finding the peroxide-ozone as suggested wastewater treatment an interesting suggestion. Any further soures on that?
- dalke 10y agoA web search found http://www.calpoly.edu/~ceenve/enve/jsczechowski/enve436/projects/UV/UV-Ozone-Peroxide.html http://www.calpoly.edu/~ceenve/enve/jsczechowski/enve436/pro... . > Based on these results the use of the UV/Ozone/Peroxide, especially the modified UV/Peroxide system, proved an effective process for removing and containing VOC contamination in the groundwater. The system was designed to treat 30,000 m g/l and the average influent was 25,00 m g/l. Along with the high contaminant removal, the system design conditions were met. The modified UV/Peroxide process replaced the UV/Ozone/Peroxide system, because the initial system, containing ozone, required lots of maintenance on the ozone generator and the delivery system. Ozone leaks were discovered (causing downtime) and the residual ozone proved to be corrosive in the reaction chamber. This supports the description that Lowe gave. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=UV%2FOZONE%2FPEROXIDE+TREATMENT&t=ffsb&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=UV%2FOZONE%2FPEROXIDE+TREATMENT&t=... seems to be a fruitful search term.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThanks. I did see that earlier. More toxics / contaminants remediation than sewage treatment. Might be interesting to see if it could break down, e.g., dioxins.
- Jun8 10y agoI wonder if somebody has done similar posts (as well written and humorous) on "Code I won't work with".
- lakkal 10y agohttp://thedailywtf.com/ http://thedailywtf.com/ would count as "Code I've been forced to work with".
- unixhero 10y agoHooh?
- unixhero 10y agoNo seriously, what is the author intending to say that when repeatedly putting it between sentences.
- rsfern 10y agoIt's a fairly common informal way of writing the chemical formula (H2O2) that tries to be a little more faithful to the geometry of the molecule... so HOOOH is hydrogen perperoxide, literally a chain of three oxygen atoms with a hydrogen atom at either end. In my electrochem (Chem 2) class, the instructor used to sometimes write HOH for water.
- gjm11 10y agoHe isn't putting it between sentences. It's part of what he's saying. HOOH is hydrogen peroxide, also sometimes written H2O2. HOOOH is dihydrogen trioxide / hydrogen perperoxide.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoSeveral of his articles mention chain mail gloves. I'm curious how those would protect you from chemicals, since chain mail is obviously quite porous. Or are they just meant to protect you from shrapnel when the container explodes in your hands? (I also recalled my father demonstrating to me, at a young age, how a candle flame wouldn't penetrate screen-door mesh, presumably because the metal is conductive; and wondered if mail might perhaps give some fire protection similarly, by spreading the heat thin. That seems unlikely, though.)
- grkvlt 10y agoYes, the chain mail protects you from the experiment detonation products, such as fragments of blast shield or fume hood, lacerating your hands. Also recommended is an iron face-mask and heavy leather apron. The candle effect you mention, is the principle behind Sir Humphry Day's safety lamp, as used by miners, which used a wire gauze screen to prevent flames igniting other flammable gases in the mine atmosphere. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_lamp for more information.
- Asooka 10y agoThe moment he mentioned peroxone, I had to go on youtube and look up if someone's actually doing it... Yep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haZrhoKSOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haZrhoKSOI
- fauria 10y agoThis are some cool unventilated kitchen experiments involving leather, sugar, flour and 99% hydrogen peroxide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i06SnRCQN6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i06SnRCQN6U
- fuzzfactor 10y agoI was calling in an order for some Acetic Acid one day and the lady asked "Glacial?" I said, "Well, I think I'd like it a little faster than that."
- razzmataz 10y agoFor me, hydroflouric acid.
- ommunist 10y agoAfter this publication I shall use this sequence O-O as my favourite emoticon. Or oxygenicon.
- sveit 10y ago"Instead of being locked in a self-storage unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three?"
- mcguire 10y ago"High-concentration hydrogen peroxide was formerly available in 70, 90, and 98% concentrations in sizes of 1-gallon, 30-gallon, and bulk-tanker truck volumes." From the HTP Wikipedia page. I grew up 3 houses from I-40. I'm surprised I'm alive.