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Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

pipeline.corante.com

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Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#31

Post by iSnow »

idlewords wrote: post #2

This is a wonderful series that (rightfully) gets posted here a lot. I'd like to point out that the author's blog is also worth digging into for interesting and insightful posts about the modern pharmaceutical industry. For example: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/03/08/erooms_law.p... (how knowing more has actually made us worse at finding effective drugs).

This guy is by far the funniest blogger I know of, I regularly and literally shed tears laughing at his "things I won't work with" blog.

And at the same freaking time he writes great thought-provoking posts about the serious stuff. Amazing.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#32

Post by dnautics »

amputect wrote: post #26
nathannecro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try my hand at simply explaining this. Atoms are composed to two sections: A positively charged center -- the nucleus. A negatively charged outside -- the electron cloud. When several atoms get together, they do so because their electron clouds start intermingling. This sharing of their electrons is fundamentally what a bond is. A bond is strong when both of the atoms really want their electrons to intermingle…

I found this super helpful. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it.

it's actually got a lot of problems with it. Preferring strong bonds to weak ones is enthalpy. Entropy is (roughly) "preferring to make m product molecules over n molecules when m > n because the combinatorics of their positions is bigger"

Energy is the total sum of the Entropic and Enthalpic components. (entropy takes a negative sign because more entropy is preferred; less enthalpy is preferred)

The text also doesn't explain what makes for high vs low energy. I'll try to explain this.

An electron is a wave. Two rules to remember: 1) a wave has higher energy when it has more nodes. 2) electrons have higher energy when it spends time 'away' from positive charge. The shapes of these waves are constrained by quantum mechanical rules, but generally speaking a 'higher energy' bond has either more nodes or has more density away from the nuclei.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#33

Post by dnautics »

IgorPartola wrote: post #17
revelation wrote: post #7

It is a bit frustrating to read this when you lack the necessary intuition. Why is a bond strong or weak, what do these atoms want to bond with and how is this all related to stuff blowing up?

I will attempt at conveying my simplistic understanding of it (physics major here): electrons are negative, protons are positive. Electrons want to be matched with protons. Two atoms can form a strong bond if they have just enough electrons to bond them but not enough to repel each other. Oxygen can bond to oxygen via a double covalent bond ( http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/bonding/doublebonds.html ) but it has too…

Urg, O2 is actually a very bad example, because it's actually 'O-O' (where the ticks are radicals), this is called "triplet" oxygen. In the ground state it's a single bonded O2 with two free, unpaired electrons. There is "singlet" oxygen which is typically depicted as O=O, but it's actually O triple-bond O with two antibonding electrons that negate one of the 'triple' bonds which makes it effectively O=O but very different in reality.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#34

Post by cstross »

keithpeter wrote: post #30
refurb wrote: post #6

I'm always amazed at the hazardous chemistry that some labs do! They are obviously taking the necessary precautions, but I'm not sure I'd have the guts to do it. I worked as a chemist for 7 years and witnessed 4 serious accidents, 3 of the 4 due to oxidizing agents (2 of them were peroxides). Some of the folks have scars to this day because of it.

Well, at least chemical reactions fall into the "fail early and loudly" category. You know something is wrong. Radioactivity and virus work strikes me as possibly more dangerous because of the relatively silent nature of the failures.

No, some chemical reactions fail early and loudly.

For absolutely no explosive lulz at all you could try for an exciting career in organic mercury compounds. (But first, I'd recommend checking out the wikipedia entry for Karen Wetterhahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn )

Or, did I say "no explosive lulz"? Apparently at one point the USAF considered using dimethyl mercury as a rocket fuel. (Source: buried in "Ignition: an informal history of liquid rocket propellants" by John D. Clarke, which can be found here: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf )

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#35

Post by keithpeter »

cstross wrote: post #34
keithpeter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at least chemical reactions fall into the "fail early and loudly" category. You know something is wrong. Radioactivity and virus work strikes me as possibly more dangerous because of the relatively silent nature of the failures.

No, some chemical reactions fail early and loudly. For absolutely no explosive lulz at all you could try for an exciting career in organic mercury compounds. (But first, I'd recommend checking out the wikipedia entry for Karen Wetterhahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn ) Or, did I say "no explosive lulz"? Apparently at one point the USAF considered using dimethyl mercury as a rocket fuel . (Source: bur…

True Charlie, I should have said most of the time...

The Wetterhahn case was mentioned in the original comment thread (or one of the articles linked from the original post) and was so shocking that permanent changes in regulations and practice occurred.

More mundane and work-a-day 'early failures' here...

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/02/16/when_reagent...

PS: Posting this from near the site of a biological failure that claimed two lives and (I gather) inspired one novel...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Parker

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#36

Post by chrisbennet »

How to Blow Up Your Kitchen With Hydrogen Peroxide.

A few years ago, upon returning home after work, my my wife told me that her mother had blown blown up her kitchen but that she was OK. (My late mother-in-law was a wonderful person BTW.)

I can be prone to inattention when my wife speaks to me but this, this got my attention. :-)

My mother in law was an antique dealer. To restore/bleach old china, she would put some (hair dresser grade) hydrogen peroxide in in/on the china in question and let it warm in the oven.

One day she did this, but for some reason, this time she used her kitchen microwave instead of the oven. While it was warming she stepped out of her kitchen (to put something in the recycle I think) and luckily escaped the blast that blew out her kitchen window and sent her microwave into the Great Beyond.

When the fire department came she, I guess, feigned ignorance of what could have caused it. She was after all, a sweet old lady.

After my wife finished telling me the story, I mentioned something to the effect that "You realize they used hydrogen peroxide in the German V2 rockets?"

A picture of the remains of the destroyed microwave was displayed at her funeral.

R.I.P. ma

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#37

Post by dghughes »

chrisbennet wrote: post #36

How to Blow Up Your Kitchen With Hydrogen Peroxide. A few years ago, upon returning home after work, my my wife told me that her mother had blown blown up her kitchen but that she was OK. (My late mother-in-law was a wonderful person BTW.) I can be prone to inattention when my wife speaks to me but this, this got my attention. :-) My mother in law was an antique dealer. To restore/bleach old china, she would put some…

Skimming comments before reading them all as I usually do it was hard not to notice the second last sentence in your comment: "A picture of the remains of the destroyed microwave was displayed at her funeral."

Certainly reddit /r/nocontext material.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#38

Post by HCIdivision17 »

Danieru wrote: post #25
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

I was one of those kids that read that the original Bell jetpack used Hydrogen Peroxide with a silver catalyst for "fuel". I tried it on the peroxide I bought from the drug store and it didn't work. So I figured "oh it just needs to be more concentrated." My friend and I built a pretty crude still and about 10 gallons of 5% hydrogen peroxide. I don't know what the concentration was when we finished, but I do remember…

How? How!? How is it you always have cool and relevant stories!?

I know, right? He's like a modern Tom Sawyer.

EDIT: It occurs to me this might not be taken as a compliment. I meant it as one, though: Chuck's always got some cool story to add, and I suspect his biography would be a heckuva ride.

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#39

Post by bsaul »

I realize i barely know anything in chemistry. I have zero practical knowledge and would be almost incapable of performing any kind of chemistry exercise anymore ( yet i do have a scientific background).

Anyone here could recommend a book or a serie of books to get myself into shape on that subject ?

Re: Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides

#40

Post by nathannecro »

dnautics wrote: post #32
amputect wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this super helpful. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it.

it's actually got a lot of problems with it. Preferring strong bonds to weak ones is enthalpy . Entropy is (roughly) "preferring to make m product molecules over n molecules when m > n because the combinatorics of their positions is bigger" Energy is the total sum of the Entropic and Enthalpic components. (entropy takes a negative sign because more entropy is preferred; less enthalpy is preferred) The text also doesn…

You're certainly correct.

I was just attempting to keep it simple.

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