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Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

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Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#31

Post by R0b0t1 »

Zak wrote: post #26
mikewarot wrote: post #9

Following a link in the comments gets you to the PDF of Streng's 1962 paper, with some good notes. Having a Pyrex cylinder of this stuff sitting in anything other than a cryostat 20 miles from civilization sounds like a very bad idea. https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jklein2/O2F2.pdf If I wanted to synthesize this stuff, I think my preferred method would be SCP-294 https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-294

> SCP-294 I'm curious as to what a "safe distance" is when requesting a cup of anti-water. Reacting 8 ounces of antimatter with a similar amount of matter releases energy on the order of a large thermonuclear bomb.

A lot of it comes out as neutrinos though.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#32

Post by graderjs »

The article was good, without the "Morons" at the end directed at Hangzhou Sage chemical company. It didn't need that, and it reeks a little of racism to pretend they're morons for working with FOOF, considering how much he lauded respect on Streng for doing so. The article already had good comic effect without needing to do it at someone else's expense whether it was racist or just cruel and dismissive.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#33

Post by IHLayman »

“ No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive).”

The link intrigued me to click but unfortunately it 404ed. That led me to hunt down the list, and I found this snippet on an Royal Society of Chemistry page [0]:

“Sir Humphry Davy, Louis-Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard all suffered intensely from the effects of inhaling hydrogen fluoride. Davy suffered injury to his eyes and fingernails. George Knox and his brother, Thomas Knox, both suffered from hydrofluoric acid poisoning. Thomas Knox nearly died. Paul Louyet and Jerome Nickles died during their investigations, presumably due to the effects of inhaling HF.”

[0]: https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-discovery-of-fluorine/202024...

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#34

Post by intuitionist »

hokumguru wrote: post #8

My personal favorite article from Derek Lowe about a chemical that isn't actually all that dangerous... but you still likely don't want it around. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

I think my favorite from the series is this one, about a high-nitrogen compound so wildly unstable that it detonated when the lab turned on the spectrometer:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#35

Post by pavel_lishin »

monkeybutton wrote: post #27
hokumguru wrote: post #8

My personal favorite article from Derek Lowe about a chemical that isn't actually all that dangerous... but you still likely don't want it around. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

I'm surprised something so potent was never used as a chemical weapon. Sounds like it could easily clear out a trench or riot in the streets.

Reminds me of the Neal Stephenson novel Zodiac, where a similar agent was used in an offensive manner.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#36

Post by wiremaus »

graderjs wrote: post #32

The article was good, without the "Morons" at the end directed at Hangzhou Sage chemical company. It didn't need that, and it reeks a little of racism to pretend they're morons for working with FOOF, considering how much he lauded respect on Streng for doing so. The article already had good comic effect without needing to do it at someone else's expense whether it was racist or just cruel and dismissive.

They don't work with it though.

The insult was for abusing that catalogue and falsely claiming they could commercially produce and ship something that they could not, and I think it was fairly deserved. I don't really see any sort of racial dogwhistles or subtext here, this reads like a small snipe over questionable business practices.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#37

Post by Nextgrid »

hokumguru wrote: post #8

My personal favorite article from Derek Lowe about a chemical that isn't actually all that dangerous... but you still likely don't want it around. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

Selenophenol is also a good one: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

> The biggest stinker I have run across... Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the metaphysical stench of this material.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#38

Post by pavel_lishin »

Stevvo wrote: post #19
geocrasher wrote: post #18

This sounds very nearly almost as toxic as dihydrogen monoxide- a truly deadly substance[0] that must be used very carefully. [0] https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/dhmo.htm [Edit] tough crowd tonight.

Funny joke if you're 12. Which I guess is why everyone heard it from their middle-school chemistry teacher.

I found it amusing well into college.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#39

Post by Laforet »

monkeybutton wrote: post #27
hokumguru wrote: post #8

My personal favorite article from Derek Lowe about a chemical that isn't actually all that dangerous... but you still likely don't want it around. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

I'm surprised something so potent was never used as a chemical weapon. Sounds like it could easily clear out a trench or riot in the streets.

In the text it is mentioned that the chemical requires significant effort to crack or activate for the desired (or undesired) effect. Of which I assume is difficult to carry out under combat conditions.

Similar compounds have been used as chemical weapons before but eventually give way to more modern agents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromoacetone

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

#40

Post by kragen »

xaviex wrote: post #12
HPsquared wrote: post #5

FOOF, the compound that makes things go "foof". Are there any other onomatopoeic chemicals out there?

Not an onomatopoeia but Sodium Citrate, which is used to create cheese that melts Into a smooth consistency, is na3c6h5o7 or NaCHO.

That would be NaOC(CO2H)(CH2CO2H)2, though, not NaCHO. NaCHO2 is sodium formate. NaCHO would involve deprotonating formaldehyde to get a CHO- ion you could make a sodium salt of. This might be possible, but definitely not in water.
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