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Pure nitrogen forms a dimer and is inert. The nitrogen that goes boom involves hydrogen and oxygen molecules.
by arrosenberg 6y ago
Pure nitrogen forms a dimer and is inert. The nitrogen that goes boom involves hydrogen and oxygen molecules.
- duskwuff 6y agoAnd "going boom" typically involves those nitrogen atoms setting off on their own to turn back into N2.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAllotropes aren't "pure" (STP) molecular N2. This allotrope seems to be the sort of thing that would be (or could be) formed in a sufficiently powerful, or engineered, explosion. How or to what ends ... I'm not sure.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoNot quite. Pure nitrogen forms an inert dimer with a very strong bond. The nitrogen that goes boom is the energy released by forming such a bond when you liberate nitrogen from complexes with other things than single nitrogen atoms. Like hydrogen and carbon and maybe oxygen. But this stuff in the article is pure nitrogen, and isn't a dimer, and certainly isn't inert (it decayed back to the dimer when pressure was released). It'd be a crappy explosive (needs to be kept in a diamond anvil cell...) but it would have released the energy used to form it. In theory there are other allotropes, like octaazacubane (N8) that might be more stable and would be frighteningly efficient explosives.