| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"hanson" |
| Date: |
17 May 2007 06:31:45 PM |
| Object: |
Re: "Chemists have a reputation for |
ahaha... ahahaha.. AHAHAHA... did you feel more 86ed by your own
nature, by NATURE or by Donald when you, <d.086@hotmail.com> w/i
news:1179434146.152371.110770@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
"donald haarmann" <donald-haarm...@worldnet.att.net> cited:
"Chemists have a reputation for being closet pyromaniacs, but the
real crazies blow themselves up."
Nature 447, 141 (10 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447141a;
Published online 9 May 2007: Chemistry: Teetering on the edge.
Emma Marris1 is a reporter for Nature based in Washington DC.
Why do chemists make compounds that could blow up in their faces?
Emma Marris finds out from a safe distance.
Explosives come in many varieties, from military munitions to rapidly
inflating airbags. But useful explosives share one thing: stability. A clear
advantage of trinitrotoluene, or TNT - whose punch is used as a yardstick
for all other explosives - is that it remains safe and solid until
detonated. So why would anyone want to make a highly unstable
explosive? One that will release its energy on the slightest provocation?
Because they are chemists, and they like explosions, is the popular
answer. Because they are chemists, and they like a technical challenge,
is what those doing the work say. How convincing is that?
Explosives release energy stored in chemical bonds in a runaway
process that often turns solids into gases, expands material massively
and creates heat.
In big explosions, pressure waves radiate out from the origin, keeping
the reaction going throughout the material. When detonated, TNT
decomposes violently into a gas, some soot, and a boom.
Many explosive compounds are less stable than TNT - some are so
temperamental or hard to make that they will probably never be used in
practice.
Consider this warning for tetraazidomethane, a particularly wild
member of the group of compounds known as polyazides, which have
a general reputation for removing student eyebrows.
"Tetraazidomethane, [(N3)2>C<(N3)2], is extremely dangerous as a
pure substance. It can explode at any time - without a recognizable cause."
Klaus Banert at the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany was
the first to synthesize this compound. He says that less than a drop of it
destroyed the glass trap and the Dewar flask of the cooling bath they used
to isolate it (K. Banert et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 46, 1168-1171; 2007).
"Although we had expected explosive properties of tetraazidomethane,
we were deeply impressed by its destructive force," he says.
His team had to work behind a safety shield and wear gloves, face
shields nd ear protectors. Banert says that when it was all over, he was
relieved. The lab had taken all reasonable safety precautions but he had
still been worried while the experiment was underway.
So why did they do it? Was it the adrenaline? The childhood lure of
explosions? Banert says that it was the pure challenge of the synthesis. "I
received my first chemistry set at the age of 11 and continued very
intensively for several years performing chemical experiments at home.
I was also interested in explosives at that time," he says. "But explosions
were only of secondary importance."
For tetraazidomethane, Banert says that it was an ambitious target to
fill this gap in the family of high-energy density materials. "The structure
of tetraazidomethane had already been calculated, and it was predicted
that the compound theoretically should be able to exist."
Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and author of the popular chemistry
blog 'In the Pipeline' runs an occasional item on 'Things I Won't Work
With'. Among them are the polyazides. But he can see the appeal of
making highly explosive compounds. "These molecules do not want to
exist. They are [1] never going to form naturally or spontaneously. [1]
These things are teetering right on the edge of not being feasible,
and you can be the first to make it." To strengthen the case that it is
the synthesis, not the destruction, that excites such minds, consider
the work of Philip Eaton at the University of Chicago, Illinois.
In the 1960s, Eaton made cubane - a cube with a carbon at each corner.
Then, at the suggestion of an army general, he went on to synthesize
a highly explosive compound called octanitrocubane (M.-X. Zhang,
P. E. Eaton & R. Gilardi. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 39, 401-404; 2000).
Octanitrocubane has the same pattern, but with nitrogen dioxide bound to
each corner carbon atom. "The problem," says Eaton, "was how the devil to
make it." The tricky synthesis has, he explains, many, many steps. "In the
course of the whole thing we made less than a gram." Eaton can't estimate
how much more explosive it is than TNT, except to say "a lot".
The idea was that the density of the structure would pack a high explosive
power into a small volume - something that was important to the military
when bulky guidance-system computers were hogging too much space
in missiles. But octanitrocubane is just too hard to make for it to have any
role in the military for the foreseeable future. Eaton is just pleased he
figured out how to synthesize it. And he did it, he repeats, for the pure
love of the challenge. "The explosiveness has no allure for me at all.
I was not the kind of kid who made explosives."
The proof? He never set off so much as a milligram of the stuff.
"There may be some folks who like that sort of thing, but they don't
tend to last very long," agrees Lowe. "Chemists have a reputation have
a reputation for being closet pyromaniacs, but the real crazies blow
themselves up."
donald j haarmann
-------------------------------
Men offer love in hope of getting sex; women offer sex in hope of
getting love; both are cheated. --- Richard J Heedham
[The 86er]
This story is from fucking NATURE? Give me a break from self serving
journalism. If anything it is NATURE that is Teetering on the edge.
Only fucking idiots read NATURE. I propose a total boycott of NATURE.
[hanson to 86er]
ahahaha... But, 86ed-one, since YOU read AND commented on it
YOU then must THE "fucking idiot" ... or do you have such a flaming
hatred on that rag because NATURE didn't print your letter that you
sent them in/for the "readers' response" section?....
But thanks for the laughs.... I like irate people!.. They are funny!
ahahaha... ahahahahanson
[hanson to Don]
Good post, Donald, but I do wonder too what the purpose & agenda of
that "Emma Marris1" is. It appears to me a typical stab at technology
by enviro-green shits, like her, to denigrate anything & everything that
hard working and dedicated people in Chemistry have invented and
created for her to live off and depend on... --- Moves by the far Left!
Signs of the times, Donald... More religion and loss of Freedom is
creeping up, slowly but surely... in many ways & guises. Bad scene!
AFA [1] "polyazides never going to form naturally". IIRC there are
reports that (N3)- spectral lines have been detected in interstellar
space.
Another interesting & unusual explosive is for instance the Perchlorate
of 2,4 dinitro diazonium aniline : [2,4-(NO2)2-Ph-N=N+ ClO4-]
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sci.physics.acoustics/msg/4d57f65b4fc1eb76
which was allegedly investigated for/as a "sonic boom" weapon.
Take care, Don,
hanson
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
Chemists have fashioned tiny dots of carbon that glow in responseto light
analytical chemists of old west
problems facing chemists in the 21st Century
Test Tube Zealots: The American Chemical Society Terminates the Membership of Chemists from Iran
Chemists!
I have a forger, I have my first forger. I have to print it for my scrapebok. Thank you. I'm so complimented. BTW, even for psychosis, it still reads English, as opposed to an American vernacular. If I were having a psychotic break, it would be in Am
Calculus ONLY works for crude *APPROXiMATiONs*, of *UNknowns*. The Euclidian SPHERE is ALREADY *exactly* "derived", you Dimwit.!! The PROBLEM with Calculus is you HAVE to know a curve *exactly*, BEFORE HAND, in order to know any AREA under a curve, *
Fund one penny for this movie, and we shall have a new direction, a new course
| Physicists have for the first time entangled two atomic quantum bits
I have answered many questions here for years. Now answer mine.
Does anybody have a Matlab wrapper for IMSL and GSL?
I have an equation for the mass of the photon!
Re: Jagdish Chandra Bose should have jointly received the 1909 Nobel Prize for the discovery of wireless telegraphy
Physicists have set a new record for the acceleration of electrons
I have made Einstein's 1925 writings on the Bose-Einstein condensate available as 1 indexed pdf file for download.
|
|
|
