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Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

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Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#11

Post by DylanSp »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #4

This is from Derek Lowe's blog "In The Pipeline" on the pharmaceutical industry via chemistry, and it's the best. It's bounced around a couple hosts over the years, and sadly this latest incarnation on science.org doesn't preserve the tags from the original. Nevertheless, look up "Derek Lowe things I won't work with" for a great and hilarious series of posts on "fun" chemicals. For example: * Peroxide Peroxides: http…

The "How Not to Do It" category is also pretty good: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/how-not-to-do-it. My favorite is probably https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-liquid-nitr..., on what happens when a pressured liquid nitrogen tank blows up due to the pressure relief valve being closed.

I'm not sure why the "Things I Won't Work With" category/tag isn't working on the new platform; all other categories I checked seem to work, though I can't find a list of all categories.

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#13

Post by [deleted] »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #4

This is from Derek Lowe's blog "In The Pipeline" on the pharmaceutical industry via chemistry, and it's the best. It's bounced around a couple hosts over the years, and sadly this latest incarnation on science.org doesn't preserve the tags from the original. Nevertheless, look up "Derek Lowe things I won't work with" for a great and hilarious series of posts on "fun" chemicals. For example: * Peroxide Peroxides: http…

[deleted]

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#14

Post by [deleted] »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #4

This is from Derek Lowe's blog "In The Pipeline" on the pharmaceutical industry via chemistry, and it's the best. It's bounced around a couple hosts over the years, and sadly this latest incarnation on science.org doesn't preserve the tags from the original. Nevertheless, look up "Derek Lowe things I won't work with" for a great and hilarious series of posts on "fun" chemicals. For example: * Peroxide Peroxides: http…

[deleted]

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #9

Other times it didn't: Sand won't save you this time (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432201 - July 2019 (30 comments) Sand Won't Save You This Time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656994 - May 2013 (1 comment) Sand Won't Save You This Time: the story of chlorine trifluoride - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532278 - March 2009 (4 comments)

[deleted]

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#16

Post by ufo »

DylanSp wrote: post #11
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #4

This is from Derek Lowe's blog "In The Pipeline" on the pharmaceutical industry via chemistry, and it's the best. It's bounced around a couple hosts over the years, and sadly this latest incarnation on science.org doesn't preserve the tags from the original. Nevertheless, look up "Derek Lowe things I won't work with" for a great and hilarious series of posts on "fun" chemicals. For example: * Peroxide Peroxides: http…

The "How Not to Do It" category is also pretty good: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/how-not-to-do-it . My favorite is probably https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-liquid-nitr... , on what happens when a pressured liquid nitrogen tank blows up due to the pressure relief valve being closed. I'm not sure why the "Things I Won't Work With" category/tag isn't working on the new platform; all othe…

Looks like manually editing the URL works: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#17

Post by stordoff »

swayvil wrote: post #10

Here's IGNITION! by John Clark (which is apparently out of print) in the downloadable digital http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=John+Clark+Ignition&lg_topic... Co-authored by Isaac Asimov!?

It was out of print, but it was reissued by Rutgers University Press Classics in 2018. The foreward was written by Isaac Asimov.

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ignition/978081359583...

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#18

Post by djmips »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #6

I was hoping that maybe this was somehow about Dune.

It could be about Alien. "a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I'm sure no one involved ever forgot. "

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#19

Post by dredmorbius »

dmitrygr wrote: post #12

The MSDS for this stuff [1] is full of fun tidbits: > Read: nobody is dumb enough to eat this stuff > > [1] https://www.boconline.co.uk/en/images/chlorine-trifluoride_t...

I think it's less a matter of someone being dumb enough to try to eat the stuff than that it will never pass anyone's lips before other far more interesting things begin occurring.

Re: Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

#20

Post by robocat »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

Also see Ignition, a book on the history of rocket fuel development, which is a great read: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

Great read. Laughing at: “But when he started working on the mercaptans, he and his accomplices were exiled to a wooden shack out in the boondocks at least two hundred yards from the main building. Undeterred and unrepentant, he continued his noisome endeavors [snip] Anyhow, he came up with the ethyl mercaptal of acetaldehyde and the ethyl mercaptol of acetone respectively. The odor of these was not so much skunk-like as garlicky, the epitome and concentrate of all the back doors of all the bad Greek restaurants in all the world. And finally he surpassed himself with something that had a dimethylamino group attached to a mercaptan sulfur, and whose odor can't, with all the resources of the English language, even be described. It also drew flies.”

“it was magnificently hypergolic with many fuels. (I used to take advantage of this property when somebody came into my lab looking for a job. At an inconspicuous signal, one of my henchmen would drop the finger of an old rubber glove into a flask containing about 100 cc of mixed acid —and then stand back. The rubber would swell and squirm" a moment, and then a magnificent rocket-like jet of flame would rise from the flask, with appropriate hissing noises. I could usually tell from the candidate's demeanor whether he had the sort of nervous system desirable in a propellant chemist.)”

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