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Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

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Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#31

Post by IAmGraydon »

bognition wrote: post #7

Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.

You would know if it was NI3 - it creates a deep purple cloud of sublimated iodine when it detonates and it stains everything around.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#34

Post by rdtsc »

bognition wrote: post #7

Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.

This stuff would go off immediately if you touched it.

I used to make it with my friends with household ammonia and medical iodine. We mixed them and then filtered through paper. Then this brown powder would explode after it dried if we touched it just lightly.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#35

Post by toddm »

bognition wrote: post #7

Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.

!

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#36

Post by colanderman »

toddm wrote: post #35
bognition wrote: post #7

Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.

!

I'm not a chemist, but the article talks about it being prepared in a solution of ammonium hydroxide which can be poured on a floor and left to dry. Surely this is what the GP is comparing their memory to, and not a bucket of pure nitrogen trioxide.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#37

Post by [deleted] »

dragochat wrote: post #9

> There is no risk of terrorists using NI3 because anybody who made it in sufficient quantities to do serious damage would succeed only in blowing themselves up: those who do so are humorous, not terrible. ...not gonna say more, but, buried in the info and video there IS actually an idea for overcoming this nasty limitation (if you can mostly live up with "quasi-random detonation time", which could be acceptable for…

[deleted]

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#38

Post by photochemsyn »

seany wrote: post #11

Is there a good archive of this kinds of "not normally taught" chemistry things some where?

Since Librivox is on the front page, here's a 1910 book reading, pretty good quality, of "The Romance of Modern Chemistry" which covers NI3 (Ch 15) and many similar topics. Surprising how much chemical knowledge existed then, even without a solid understanding of QM:

https://librivox.org/the-romance-of-modern-chemistry-by-jame...

An interesting feature is that if you go up the periodic table on the iodine column, the species become less reactive, with nitrogen bromide being explosive but more stable than NI3 and the fluorine derivative, NF3 being stable enough to use in industrial semiconductor applications (etching), and with the benefit of not being a persistent environmental pollutant due to relatively rapid breakdown.

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