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Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

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Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#51

Post by BoxOfRain »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #6

A fun thing to make. I made this in the high school chemistry room after school. Filter paper with some iodine crystals, pour some ammonia over and wait for it to dry (as I recall). I am not sure where I learned about it. Often my dad, who was a chemist then, would tell me little tricks like this. (He also turn me on to slathering a small amount of potassium permanganate with glycerin.) Anyway, I was walking with it…

My A-level chemistry teacher liked to paint it onto door frames and in the hallways. Apparently one day he'd left some out in his lab in preparation for this prank, then the school had a surprise inspection. He had to teach his class in front of the inspectors while being constantly interrupted by small purple explosions.

He also liked to let off expired fire extinguishers at his sixth formers out of his window, and he once attempted to use them to propel a pupil sitting on a wheely office chair. Very memorable teacher!

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#52

Post by hilbert42 »

It's a great shame John Walker is no longer with us, he was a bright fellow (even though I thought his company's products were too expensive). I loved his Hacker's Diet book, a true techie's approach to dieting. Certainly worth a read if one's interested in such things.

No doubt those of us who've gravitated to this link like watching things that go bang so make sure you read Walker's link at the bottom of the Nitrogen Triiodide page to his article on FOOF—aka Dioxygen Difluoride (O2F2). Also, make sure you read the link in that page to Derek Lowe's blog in Science's site Things I Won't Work With.

Every chemist should read Lowe's blogs, they're not only informative but often entertaining. I've copied the FOOF link here for convenience (this truly is chemistry at the bleeding edge):

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

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#53

Post by gus_massa »

devrandoom wrote: post #30
bigyabai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were not "normally taught" how to do this stuff then you probably shouldn't do it.

If you weren't asked for patronising advice you probably shouldn't offer it.

I went to a high school with an specialization in Chemistry in Argentina. We made a lot of Chemistry experiments, like 16 hours per week.

One day the other half of my class was at the lab. They were boiling some organic compound with potassium permanganate and probably sulfuric acid. The idea is that you have them in a flask, and a long refrigerated vertical tube to condense the vapors and send the liquid inside the flask again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflux#Reflux_in_chemical_reac...

They forgot to add some porcelain scrap to the flask, that is useful to get an even boiling instead of big bubbles. So they added them while it was already boiling!

It boiled too fast and create a jet of hot mix that reached the ceiling that was like 3 meters (18 foots) high. Lucky nobody got hurt, but as a reminder we had a brown mark in the ceiling for a few years.

Many experiments need supervision from someone that knows what they are doing.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#54

Post by bognition »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #31
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.

This was nearly 30 years ago, so honestly i don't remember much beyond the fun of hearing things explode under the wheels of my rollerblades

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#55

Post by bognition »

gsf_emergency wrote: post #29
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.

Do you remember purple smoke?

This was nearly 30 years ago, so honestly i don't remember much beyond the fun of hearing things explode under the wheels of my rollerblades

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#56

Post by rdtsc »

keepamovin wrote: post #48
rdtsc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's crazy that something so unstable can even exist at RTP. Like it's interesting how it threads the line between so-unstable-you-can't-make-me, and stable-enough-to-make-but-decompose-under-a-stern-glance. Universe has a sense of fun, NI3 is tuned specifically for existence as a prank substance.

> Universe has a sense of fun, NI3 is tuned specifically for existence as a prank substance.

It does feel that way! Another plus for the substance is just releases iodine, not something poisonous like lead for instance.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#57

Post by fuzzfactor »

nullc wrote: post #45

If you like crazy chemistry stories, be sure to read "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?". One of the first stories in it involve the high school chemistry club breaking into the local college to get materials for some experiments. Along the way they find metallic sodium in kerosene and take some by shoving it in someone's back pocket. After some time passes it predictably catches fire.…

My first job out of college was working for a similar company to how Gergel's was, in the 1970's.

Founded by one of my professors, I learned a lot.

We distributed his isoproply bromide, among others, and he sold a lot of ours too.

I gradually migrated from chemical entrpreneurialism with my own chemicals, over to my own electronics with other peoples' chemicals :)

It can still can get more toxic some times than others :\

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#58

Post by devrandoom »

gus_massa wrote: post #53
devrandoom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you weren't asked for patronising advice you probably shouldn't offer it.

I went to a high school with an specialization in Chemistry in Argentina. We made a lot of Chemistry experiments, like 16 hours per week. One day the other half of my class was at the lab. They were boiling some organic compound with potassium permanganate and probably sulfuric acid. The idea is that you have them in a flask, and a long refrigerated vertical tube to condense the vapors and send the liquid inside the…

> Many experiments need supervision from someone that knows what they are doing.

Of course. He was neither saying or offering that though.

For the record, 3 meters are more like 10ft.

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#59

Post by trehalose »

photochemsyn wrote: post #38
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…

NF3 is very different than the other nitrogen halides and used as a silicon etchant, but re: environmental concerns, perhaps you're confusing it with something else? It's an extremely potent greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenhous...) Surprisingly less toxic than some other gases used in the semiconductor industry though!

Re: Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)

#60

Post by seany »

bigyabai wrote: post #13
seany wrote: post #11

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

If you were not "normally taught" how to do this stuff then you probably shouldn't do it.

Doing it is significantly different than asking for a repository of similar projects. Arguably this kind of gate keeping is specifically what I'm trying to step around.
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