I misread the title at first, and for a short time, I was very excited to see these explosive trilobites.
4 Likes
Actually, iodine is on the DEA restricted list because it is used in the production of methamphetamine (the so-called āred white & blueā method).
4 Likes
We somehow never made such large concentrations of crystals ā instead weād end up with a powdery stuff weād casually spread around the hallway right before the bell would ring. It was more like pop-its than a big scary explosion.
Also, could the flashes of light in the high-speed be piezoluminescent in nature?
One of my CS professors in college blinded himself and lost half of his left hand with NI3 while he was in high school. Heād made a Mason jar full, and the teacher came in to the room. He slammed the drawer containing the jar shut. This was not good.
2 Likes
Am I the only one who was hoping for super-super-slow-mo mosquito landing on a pile and exploding?
12 Likes
Choice of organic solvent is important here, too. Some of them will take up the peroxide to form their own liquid contact explosive. Carbon tet, maybe, or chloroform.
1 Like
The hardest part was stealing the iodine crystals from the chem dept. Any time Iodine got used in class, we had to distract the teacher and sneak some out. I made the mistake of letting a crystal that was a bit too big dry out in a yogurt pot in the basement. Not that dangerous, but my ears rang for a bit and I had to make myself scarce quickly.
1 Like
Acetone is a bitch in this regard. It will also be rather difficult to separate from the aqueous phase, it tends to form a coarse emulsion that stays stuck. It will also react with the iodine to iodoacetone, which is a lachrymator used as a chemical weapon in WW1 despite it being relatively harmless, if irritant. (Managed to do exactly this mistake with bromine, decades ago. Made a half test tube of a tear gas by accident. Once I realized what I did, I cried with laughter.)
Unsaturated solvents will be problematic here, too. Hexane is maybe the best bet, or other aliphatic hydrocarbons. Possibly go cold and use butane, that may extract the iodine well and then be very easy to evaporate.
Yeah, some people (ahem) made quite a mess of one of the school bathrooms like thatā¦
5 Likes
As cool as that was, I loved watching that, I canāt help but be a smidgen disappointed that I did not get to see a mosquito meet his fiery purple death in a nitrogen trioxide explosion.
5 Likes
Now, how to make such videoā¦
Would probably require a black/white high speed camera, these donāt need that much light. The lights needed for the color one may scare the mosquitos away or overheat the target plate with the same effect.
Then we need a bait. Something that attracts the desired kind of insect. Coated with dots of NI3, spaced enough to not propagate explosions from one to another; kind of like a miniminefield.
Then some electronics to record the high-framerate video into a circular buffer, and stop recording shortly after the explosion.
Then just wait for the bug to manifest.
3 Likes
make it so
2 Likes
Why do I feel like the chemistry department at my university just got exponentially less safe this weekend?
3 Likes
When I was a kid, we used to do this by putting a little bit on a coffee filter, and sprinkling sugar on it before it dried. Then you wait for it to dry and a wasp to land on it.
1 Like
Somebody please draw a picture of a wasp with a headset and a mine detector! 
5 Likes
Hm. One wondersā¦
One college weekend I once helped my chem major friend make a gallon sized batch.
It started going unstable even in its liquid form, so he was scrambling to try to dilute it. He happened to have some acetone in his dorm room (donāt askā¦) but that wasnāt helping.
We locked the vessel in a storage closet and ran over to the library to check the Merck index, which indicated that the required solvent was ether. Over to the chemistry department, but couldnāt find any ether.
He ended up having to dump the whole batch, and while in the closet it had splashed all over a friendsā photographic equipment, so that had to be replaced.
Compared to the time we made mercury fulminate, it was quite the bust.
3 Likes
Nitrogen is a wonderful thing. My favorite is silver nitride, which will detonate under its own weight. According to the Great Wiki āSilver nitride is often produced inadvertently during laboratory experiments involving silver compounds and ammonia, leading to surprise detonations.ā
For those who have a fascination with this area of chemistry should read the blog āIn The Pipelineā and specifically the subthread āThings I wonāt Work With.ā
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/
āAnd yes, what happens next is just what you think happens: you run a
mixture of oxygen and fluorine through a 700-degree-heating block. āOh,
no you donāt,ā is the common reaction of most chemists to that proposal,
ā. . .not unless Iām at least a mile away, two miles if Iām downwind.ā
This, folks, is the bracingly direct route to preparing dioxygen
difluoride, often referred to in the literature by its evocative formula
of FOOF. . . . FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; youāll never get close to RT
with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces. Iāve seen one
reference to storing it as a solid at 90 Kelvin for later use, but that paper,
a 1962 effort from A. G. Streng of Temple University, is deeply
alarming in several ways. Not only did Streng prepare multiple batches
of dioxygen difluoride and keep it around, he was apparently charged
with finding out what it did to things. All sorts of things. One damn
thing after another, actually:ā
6 Likes
i am a fan of that series of posts you linked to. his discussions of the klapotke group in germany and their work with high nitrogen compounds is some of the funniest writing about chemistry iāve ever read.
3 Likes
I absolutely love that series.
The prose is worth its weight in purified rare proteins!
3 Likes
