Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/

by timr • 16 years ago

202 50 16 years ago

pipeline.corante.com

ableal• 16 years ago

There was a time when there were chemistry sets for sale as gifts to kids ... Mostly rather mild stuff - pretty colors, bad smells, melted plastic.

This is hard core chemistry lab. Choice bit on a particularly explosive paper:

If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic.

P.S. the URL posted is not for the exact piece which is currently at the top; that's http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_won...

P.P.S. don't miss out on the comments - some are as amusing as the post, and there's even a call for a web business at #46 ...

joshu• 16 years ago

"satan's kimchi"

TrevorJ• 16 years ago

It is funny that you mention that since I commonly refer to kimchi itself as "Satan's salad". I've never read a chemistry article that was this entertaining.

sp3322• 16 years ago

Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens...and 433 kcal

433 kilocalaries from 5 molecules? Am I reading that right?

megaduck4• 16 years ago

Yeah, that made me do a double-take too. Can you imagine what a gram of the stuff would do?

NathanKP• 16 years ago

That's why he was laughing at the fact that a company is apparently willing to sell and ship it in kilos.

eru• 16 years ago

He's probably talking about mols of the stuff.

gus_massa• 16 years ago

It gives 433 kcal/mol, i. e. 433 kilocalories from 5 * 6.02E23 molecules. It is approximately 68g FOOF and 132g HS. (about 2oz and 5oz respectively)

jules• 16 years ago

Is that a lot? The same amount of fat can be burned for more energy?

megaduck4• 16 years ago

I've never had much interest in chemistry, but after reading this article, I found myself digging through the archives. And then I found myself thinking, "Chlorine Trifluoride is scary stuff! He says that's because it's a damned impressive oxidizing agent. What exactly does it mean to be an 'oxidizing agent' anyways? Hmm..." I'm now sorely tempted to spend the remainder of my day sifting through chemistry stuff online.

This is exactly the kind of writing that the scientific community needs. This is outreach and recruitment at its finest, and we could use a lot more of it. People ask, "How do we get kids interested in science?" Prof. Lowe's blog isn't the entire answer, but it's a hell of a good start.

Correction: As noted below, Dr. Lowe is not a professor. My error, but everything else still stands.

dalke• 16 years ago

Mmmm, he's a corporate pharmaceutical researcher with a PhD and not an academic, so while you can call him "Dr." he's not a "Prof."

oconnore• 16 years ago

Speaking of things the scientific community needs: less academic snobbery.

stuff4ben• 16 years ago

How do you get kids interested in science? With chemistry, it's always been to "blow shit up!" Fond memories of my HS chem teacher because of his penchant to do just that. I had way more fun with computers, but chemistry was an option (until organic chemistry in college...shudder).

andymism• 16 years ago

For me, the pain of ochem really depended on the instructor. Where I went to college, it really felt like 90% of the ochem instructors were either bad teachers or liked to watch students struggle. It was otherwise pretty easy material--if you had a good teacher.

From the shear number of horror stories about ochem and my own experience, I'd say most ochem professors are just bad teachers and don't care about their students.

FlorinAndrei• 16 years ago

Ha ha! Nice!

I was a chemistry geek in high school, with a penchant for highly exothermic reactions if you know what I mean. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

dmm• 16 years ago

I'm so thankful chemical warfare did not become widely practiced. There are some truly horrible substances out there.

donw2• 16 years ago

Many of which are available on the dollar menu at Taco Bell.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

So that's what "mustard gas" is.

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

My favorite line from his blog is "[Perchloric acid] is 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."

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/30/things_i_won...

sethg• 16 years ago

My wife, a chemistry Ph.D. turned stay-at-home-mom, loves the “Things I Won’t Work With” series. It brings back fond memories of all the bench-top fires she was responsible for as a grad student.

Zak• 16 years ago

A quick google search reveals that this stuff reacts with xenon. Nasty, indeed.

zaphar• 16 years ago

That was a very entertaining read. That blog is going on my reading list for sure.

nas• 16 years ago

Good stuff. For those who haven't seen them, the Periodic Table of Videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos#p/u/17/pPdevJTGAY...) are entertaining.

adw• 16 years ago

Well, there's a reason why the founder crew working here at Timetric are all ex-theoretical chemists...

...ish, anyway. I'm a mineralogist by training, which exposes you to a different set of scary stuff. X-rays, neutron beams, bandsaws, and in my own oh-God-close-escape moment, cryogenic gases - a mishap during a calorimetry experiment leading to a canister of liquid N2 gushing out through a broken pressure hose.

All kids' play compared to this stuff, though; neutrons will kill you dead but there are so many safety interconnects and film-badge radiation detectors that you'd have to actually want to get hurt. Organic chemists are hardcore.

btilly• 16 years ago

Quick question. How in the heck can you make a high explosive at 700C that has a nasty tendency to react with stuff and explode at -180C? Wouldn't it explode before you've actually made it?

ars2• 16 years ago

Keep it away from anything it might react with.

donw2• 16 years ago

Flourine is nasty stuff, period.

I'll be reading through the archives of this blog, for the same reasons that I tracked down a PDF copy of the late John Clark's book 'Ignition', which is a history of rocket fuel. Note that an actual copy of the book itself is a collectors' item and sells for around $400; believe you me, if I could pick one of these up out of the bargain bin at Walgreens, I would.

Here's his description of the lovely Chlorine Triflouride:

”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

berntb2• 16 years ago

You got all that from the Wiki page? :-)

ars2• 16 years ago

Chlorine trifluoride http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa... is still my favorite.

That stuff will burn cement and rocks! And I do mean burn, and not dissolve or anything else.

pw0ncakes• 16 years ago

I wonder how it reacts with Fluoride Divanadium, also known as FDiV.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Tangentially related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F00f

neuroelectronic2• 16 years ago

I wonder if this Dioxygen Difluoride + Hydrogen Sulfide reaction could be harnessed as an ultra-dense fuel source for an internal combustion engine.

pwdfilelocked• 16 years ago

- First the fuel source would need to be kept at -160C or so, which is difficult, and would be decidedly impressive upon failure. - Second, one of the reaction products is HF gas. If this doesn't mean anything to you, note that HF gas was the -first- substance covered in the "Things I won't work with" category. "And that soaks into tissue very readily, with the acid part doing its damage along the way, and the fluoride merrily poisoning enzymes and wreaking havoc."

neuroelectronic2• 16 years ago

Sounds like a win-win

idlewords• 16 years ago

Neither of those chemicals is particularly dense, and as a bonus HS is incredibly poisonous. Just so you have something to worry about in both propellant tanks.

There are propellants that give you more zing per gram than a gasoline/air mixture, but the improvement is not that great. Gasoline is near the limit of energy density for practical chemical fuels - see http://physics.info/energy-chemical/

csytan• 16 years ago

Chemists in general are a crazy lot.

I once worked in a lab where my job was to dispose of chemicals and clean out beakers and glassware (a dishwasher). Sometimes we needed to use concentrated sulfuric acid to clean out the particularly nasty stuff when regular detergent wouldn't cut it.

One drop of this stuff will make your skin peel off and fall into the sink; one splash could blind you.

I was always donned in a lab coat, thick gloves, safety glasses, etc. but my professor used just his bare hands, rotating the glassware so that the liquid would touch all surfaces. Meanwhile, I would watch in awe and wonder. Awe, because he was cocky enough to do this knowing the risks, and wonder, that he was still alive in once piece.

berntb2• 16 years ago

Well, [organic] chemists are "famous" for low average life span.

I heard claims that the life expectancy was much better these days, but the person making the claim had an obvious interest in selling people on doing more courses in the subject. (And the subject is fun; if it had been possible for me, I would have done more org chem.)

tjmc• 16 years ago

Hilarious article. I'm always a bit disappointed by how little overlap there is between the chemistry and hacker communities though. cf. comments like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149075

elblanco• 16 years ago

Wow what great science writing. He made it sound incredibly cool, and normal at the same time. Like somebody talking about car racing.

Now I want to go and look up all this stuff.

Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride

Related Stories