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Sand won’t save you this time (2008)

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21–30 of 34 posts

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

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if anyone has confirmed this explicitly, but it’s a likely assumption that Ignition! went back in to print after many years of unavailability precisely because of all the interest stirred up by this post.

Paperback or Kindle available from Amazon.

The Autobiography of Max Gergel is a similarly interesting book about chemistry with some anecdotes from the early space age. Not in print that I've found but the PDF is on archive.org

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

#23

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…

This comment section full of plutonian chemistry and sketchy rocketry is the perfect place to mention Charles Stross' A Tall Tail [0], a short sci-fi story covering both.

[0] https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/

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

#25

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…

This comment section full of plutonian chemistry and sketchy rocketry is the perfect place to mention Charles Stross' A Tall Tail [0], a short sci-fi story covering both. [0] https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/

Gee! A cstross short story I haven't read!? christmas is early this year

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

#26

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...

> nobody is dumb enough to eat this stuff

I think we can agree, at least, that the intersection of "people smart enough to devise a way to ingest this without premature combustion of the head" and "people dumb enough to do it" is probably n<1

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

#27
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I am fairly certain it is not legal to edit the URL to get to a page on a website.

People have gone to jail for this.

EDIT: To be clear, I am commenting as a way of venting over the ridiculous state of affairs, not because I agree or think that science.org will send the feds after you.

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

#28

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...

Are there other works like this? I know about Gergel mentioned alongside this post, and if you're dutch, K.G. Paulus' Kernenergie en opwerking was also an eye popping cynical book about ongoing stupidity in the nuclear world.

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

#29
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am fairly certain it is not legal to edit the URL to get to a page on a website. People have gone to jail for this. EDIT: To be clear, I am commenting as a way of venting over the ridiculous state of affairs, not because I agree or think that science.org will send the feds after you.

Have you got any sources of this?

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

#30
I feel easily confused by basic chemistry principles. Is ClF3 an ionic salt? I believe that if I drew that out in high school chemistry, it would get marked down because both constituent elements are of the same charge.

https://www.quora.com/Is-chlorine-trifluoride-ionic

[shrug]

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