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Dimethyl mercury would actually make a really good rocket fuel, aside from the small problem that one drop will kill 50 people (slowly and painfully) and the exhaust products are also really bad for living things in general. UDMH and RFNA looks positively safe in comparison! You can survive some amount of exposure to those! And that's why the cutting-edge launch vehicles of today still use the ol' kerosene or hydrogen as fuel and LOX as oxidizer in their first stages. It's a bit less efficient, but it doesn't poison the planet. ICBM booster fuel is a bit nastier, but if they go flying en masse, the exhaust products are the least of your worries. Also, this thread has made me more cautious. The other day I was driving and saw a column of yellowish-brown smoke. Turns out it was just somebody burning trash, presumably with some wacky poo poo mixed in. But at least it wasn't lung-raping rocket fuel.
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Jun 17, 2015 05:58
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Yeah, isn't dimethylmercury an organometallic compound? And thus will kill you so dead your dead body will kill people? Elemental mercury, please.
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Jun 17, 2015 06:57
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PerrineClostermann posted:Yeah, isn't dimethylmercury an organometallic compound? And thus will kill you so dead your dead body will kill people? It's the one famed for having doomed a chemist to an agonizing death over the course of months because a single drop landed on her gloved hand. I'd say Not Even Once, but apparently it's horribly useful in NMR. They at least have gloves that are impervious to it now (for up to two minutes I think). Elemental mercury you can literally drink, as long as you don't make a habit of it.
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Jun 17, 2015 07:11
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PerrineClostermann posted:Yeah, isn't dimethylmercury an organometallic compound? And thus will kill you so dead your dead body will kill people? A very metal way to die, in all senses of the term.
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Jun 17, 2015 08:12
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Code Jockey posted:A very metal way to die, in all senses of the term. 
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Jun 17, 2015 09:40
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Delivery McGee posted:Dimethyl mercury would actually make a really good rocket fuel, aside from the small problem that one drop will kill 50 people (slowly and painfully) and the exhaust products are also really bad for living things in general.
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Jun 17, 2015 10:01
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Collateral Damage posted:Nitroglycerin would make a pretty good rocket fuel as well (it's a monopropellant!) but that doesn't make it a good idea. Didn't stop people from experimenting with it though. Interesting Post/Avatar combo there.
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Jun 17, 2015 10:03
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I feel my avatar is appropriate for a lot of the content in this thread.
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Jun 17, 2015 10:05
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PerrineClostermann posted:Yeah, isn't dimethylmercury an organometallic compound? And thus will kill you so dead your dead body will kill people? Some people speculate Dimethylmercury was the "red mercury" that people wanted for nuclear weapons, because of a CIA sting where they pretended that it was a really good rocket fuel which they then "leaked" to the USSR, so they'd think that they should waste tons of time and money working on it. "Red mercury" was the russian codename for this mythical mercurated fuel or something.
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Jun 18, 2015 19:07
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Drone_Fragger posted:Some people speculate Dimethylmercury was the "red mercury" that people wanted for nuclear weapons, because of a CIA sting where they pretended that it was a really good rocket fuel which they then "leaked" to the USSR, so they'd think that they should waste tons of time and money working on it. "Red mercury" was the russian codename for this mythical mercurated fuel or something.
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Jun 18, 2015 20:37
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I'm Crap posted:Er, that's the plot of a short story by Charlie Stross, not an actual thing that happened or even that people seriously believe. Yeah it's a neat little short story that is told as if it were a real story related to him at a rocketry conference. The end of the story suggests that it was some false-flag stuff fed to the Russians that ends up being what caused Chernobyl.
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Jun 19, 2015 01:47
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Memento posted:Yeah it's a neat little short story that is told as if it were a real story related to him at a rocketry conference. The end of the story suggests that it was some false-flag stuff fed to the Russians that ends up being what caused Chernobyl. To be fair, though, that kind of thing did happen (allegedly). The only part I'd doubt is the red mercury/Chernobyl side of things, everything else is totally plausible.
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Jun 19, 2015 01:58
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People have spoken a lot in this thread about HF - hydrofluoric acid. It's a motherfucker, as everyone knows. I was having a conversation with a consultant geologist we've just put on for an extended contract with my team. He was talking to us about working at Mt Isa Mines in Queensland during the late 70s, when they were expanding operations and finding new mineralisation every time they tripped over. They pioneered some interesting techniques during that time, that we still use in various forms today. One of them is getting oriented drill core, cut in half for a flat face and then observed for linear and planar features that indicate underground structure. The way we do it these days is by putting little cameras down drill holes that image the hole for you and export it to a 3D modelling program. Back then, they had to pick features out of core by eye and do the calculations by hand on a slide rule. One of the issues with this is that without advanced computer image processing, it can be really hard to pick structural traces out of something, as opposed to veins or joints and cracks that are pretty random. One of the ways you can do this is to etch the cut face of the core with acid. Guess which acid they would use for this? Oh yeah. They would get 20 litre carboys of >40% HF with pumps on top and just slather a tray of cut core with acid. They noticed early that if there was any grease left on the core from the drilling, the acid would clean it up really nicely, so it became a "standard" practice to wash a fresh piece of core in a tray of HF before rinsing it off in water and cutting it. Miraculously, no one died of their bones dissolving from the inside. I have no idea how. I mean, it was an Australian workplace in the 70s, so the chances of there even being a single pair of safety glasses on site were slim to none, let alone any masks/gloves/gowns/all of the other poo poo you might use when in the same building as HF. To be fair, there probably were more than a few minor splash injuries. One of the fun things about HF is that it can interfere with nerve function, so they might have been burned and never noticed. It's all fun and games until someone loses a femur.
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Jun 24, 2015 04:36
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Not to take away from the physical effects, because hypocalcemia while suffering from chemical burns is a real awful way to die, but the thread is pretty good at showing HF is, by some twisted form of relativity, sort of baby time compared to other commercially significant or scientifically useful materials. Aqueous solutions can be a bummer because of the numbing effects leading to chronic exposure if the education isn't there. Anhydrous is kind of easier to handle because you know when it touches you, and when it hits air it makes big scary clouds of smoke you instinctively know to run away from. The interesting part is the ubiquity. Every fluorine sitting in a polymer? Comes from HF. We started with plenty enough Fs in CFCs. Those HFC propellants and refrigerants we've switched to as part of the Montreal Protocol? Time for that many more F substitutions. I couldn't find a recent number from cursory googling and there's been a bit of hot potato with domestic US vs Chinese production of those products in the past decade to say how accurate it is but you can get an idea of the magnitude: 15 years ago US domestic consumption of HF was 350,000 metric tons. Most generally rolling about the country on rail tank cars. That poo poo gets around such that nearly everyone has probably been closer to 100s of metric tons of it than they would probably prefer.
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Jun 24, 2015 17:40
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zedprime posted:Not to take away from the physical effects, because hypocalcemia while suffering from chemical burns is a real awful way to die, but the thread is pretty good at showing HF is, by some twisted form of relativity, sort of baby time compared to other commercially significant or scientifically useful materials. Aqueous solutions can be a bummer because of the numbing effects leading to chronic exposure if the education isn't there. Anhydrous is kind of easier to handle because you know when it touches you, and when it hits air it makes big scary clouds of smoke you instinctively know to run away from. I had a chemistry professor say that HF isn't as terrifying as you would expect, simply due to F being so electronegative that it holds on to that poor little H extremely tightly. Then again, F is so reactive that Xe can be made to react with it, so if I hear a horror story about a reaction it's involved in I'll probably believe it.
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Jun 24, 2015 22:22
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Icon Of Sin posted:I had a chemistry professor say that HF isn't as terrifying as you would expect, simply due to F being so electronegative that it holds on to that poor little H extremely tightly. Then again, F is so reactive that Xe can be made to react with it, so if I hear a horror story about a reaction it's involved in I'll probably believe it. As a result of that electronegativity, when HF dissociates in water as any acid does, it does so "weakly" in the technical sense. The "strongest" (not true but whatevs) acid being a "weak acid" is just a nice little bit of irony in chemistry I suppose. Edit: vvvvv I put strongest in quotes because I meant it in terms of what people often associate with HF; that it is highly acidic. Not that it is itself a fully dissociating acid. Firos has a new favorite as of 03:06 on Jun 25, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 23:56
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Strong and weak in terms of acids only refers to how easily the proton pops off. Perchloric is one of the strongest of the mineral acids if I remember. HFs nastiness comes from the fact that it does not dissociate easily so it readily penetrates the skin and hits the blood stream as HF. Then, being the reactive bitch that F is, goes and turns all the calcium ion it can into CaF2. CaF2 is very stable and hates dissolving in water so it ain't going no where. Like I used CaF2 for aqueous FTIR plates water hates it so much.
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Jun 25, 2015 02:33
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Icon Of Sin posted:I had a chemistry professor say that HF isn't as terrifying as you would expect, simply due to F being so electronegative that it holds on to that poor little H extremely tightly. Then again, F is so reactive that Xe can be made to react with it, so if I hear a horror story about a reaction it's involved in I'll probably believe it. It's mostly the long term debilitating illness you can get when you accidentally spill some on yourself. Not nearly as bad as Methylmercury, or some of the really awful carcinogens, but still not something to gently caress around with outside of lab conditions unless you know exactly what the gently caress you're doing with it.
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Jun 25, 2015 13:39
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Firos posted:As a result of that electronegativity, when HF dissociates in water as any acid does, it does so "weakly" in the technical sense. The "strongest" (not true but whatevs) acid being a "weak acid" is just a nice little bit of irony in chemistry I suppose. It isn't "highly acidic". Not more so than citric acid. It just specifically likes to attack things such as unwary humans. And the fluorine is reactive in its own way, which is also scary. But that's unrelated to its acidity. It would be more accurate to call 'HF' highly corrosive than 'highly acidic'.
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Jun 25, 2015 18:10
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It's been ages since I did chemistry but HF isn't particularly interesting for its acid properties, it's all the extra fun properties the fluorine adds to the mix that makes it so infamous really. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oipksRhISfM
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Jun 25, 2015 19:09
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HF isn't that particularly bad, comparatively. Having worked with superacids and in a lab where they attached functional groups to metals to make them more "interesting" , I'd happily play with gallons of HF instead.
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Jun 25, 2015 19:29
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Shanakin posted:It's been ages since I did chemistry but HF isn't particularly interesting for its acid properties, it's all the extra fun properties the fluorine adds to the mix that makes it so infamous really. Nice video. You don't happen to have a vid bookmarked where they hang meat in strong lye or something, do you?
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Jun 25, 2015 23:25
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I didn't even have that one bookmarked, just ran into it a couple of weeks ago and remembered it. A quick search turned up this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IoH1rwYc68
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Jun 25, 2015 23:46
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Kinetica posted:HF isn't that particularly bad, comparatively. Having worked with superacids and in a lab where they attached functional groups to metals to make them more "interesting" , I'd happily play with gallons of HF instead. tell us about superacids 
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Jun 26, 2015 02:09
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atomicthumbs posted:tell us about superacids
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Jun 26, 2015 04:04
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The real question is which acid is the closest to cartoon/videogame "acid that dissolves you in seconds if you fall in"? Bonus points if it's mysteriously glowing green.
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Jun 26, 2015 15:09
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Luneshot posted:The real question is which acid is the closest to cartoon/videogame "acid that dissolves you in seconds if you fall in"? Bonus points if it's mysteriously glowing green. Piranha solution?
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Jun 26, 2015 15:36
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Platystemon posted:Piranha solution? Has the bonus of bubbling and fuming violently. I approve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLpSapjKcxM KillHour has a new favorite as of 16:56 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 16:54
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if you don't want to bring the weird superacids into the mix and keep it to stuff that you could conceivably buy a couple of barrels of to build your indoor acid pool, chromic acid is pretty good. gonna take a while to dissolve you though, but it is strong red and highly toxic/carcinogenic at least
L. Ron Mexico has a new favorite as of 17:55 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 17:48
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KillHour posted:Has the bonus of bubbling and fuming violently. I approve. And it cleans itself by turning dissolved carbon into CO2. 
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Jun 26, 2015 20:10
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Arsenic Lupin posted:One of the saddest days of my mystery-reading life was finding out that cyanide (in small concentrations, obvs) smells like bitter almonds to only some people; others can't smell it at all. From a while back but I'm very glad my father won that particular genetic lottery as I would most likely not be around if he hadn't. Both my parents were organic chemists in their younger days. My father was monitoring on of my mother's experiments but unbeknownst to him the fume hood was broken and he most likely would have died if he couldn't have smelt the cyanide being produced. I, thankfully, never had the occasion to work out whether I am also able to smell it. One other thing; I had a look at the Wikipedia article on Dr Klapötke and I love the title of the article in the footnotes: "Mann mit Wumm". This can be roughly translated as "The Man with Bang". Munin has a new favorite as of 23:09 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 23:06
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Luneshot posted:The real question is which acid is the closest to cartoon/videogame "acid that dissolves you in seconds if you fall in"? Bonus points if it's mysteriously glowing green. It'll murder your jeans in cartoon fashion if nothing else.
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Jun 27, 2015 01:30
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zedprime posted:Simplicity can go a long way. Plain old high concentration sulfuric is responsible for more chemical burn deaths than its simplicity as a mineral acid might make you expect. Maybe not cartoon-like but probably the simplest way to watch fleshy parts burn away before your eye since its a stable liquid at STP. It's also incredibly hydrophilic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gG0UAX3V7c Above it is literally ripping the hydrogen and oxygen out of sugar to form water, leaving amorphous carbon.
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Jun 27, 2015 01:56
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Munin posted:One other thing; I had a look at the Wikipedia article on Dr Klapötke and I love the title of the article in the footnotes: "Mann mit Wumm". This can be roughly translated as "The Man with Bang". Well, that or Vim and/or Vigor.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:03
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Incidentally piranha solution inspired an impromptu drain clog cleaning a couple weeks ago. I wet the hair and soap scum based clog with all purpose cleaner (the dilute weak organic acid sort) and chased it with drug store concentration peroxide. Seemed to work. I am probably at that sweet spot of chemistry and idiocy that is going to end poorly.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:27
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NLJP posted:Well, that or Vim and/or Vigor. No, that would be "Mann mit Mumm". 
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Jun 27, 2015 02:33
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zedprime posted:I am probably at that sweet spot of chemistry and idiocy that is going to end poorly. Depends on if you're on a septic tank or municipal sewer. Either way, here's hoping the plumbing held up on the way. 
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Jun 27, 2015 04:52
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Superacids talk: We were doing catalyst work with them. We weren't using the really horrid one, fluoroantimonic acid (H2FSbF6), but some of them were pretty nasty. One really fun thing you get to worry about is decomposition products. I'm fine dealing with liquid acids, but when these bastards decompose and many of them spit out gaseous acids because they hate you and all humanity, I tend to become a bit neurotic. Not all of them are that spiteful though, ones like triflic acid are much milder. Not something you want to stick your hand in or be around when it decomposes, but it could be worse. I could have had to deal with methylated metals. Basically, don't do things that are dumb, and for fucks sake if you have a question on working with it just ask.
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Jun 27, 2015 05:02
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Kinetica posted:Superacids talk: Methylated metals like these methylated metals? And of course, 
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Jun 27, 2015 05:16
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darthbob88 posted:Methylated metals like these methylated metals? Exactly. Not touching those. Organometallics are cool, but as long as they stay as nice and large molecules. Luckily I don't have any horror stories about working with superacids, everyone was very careful. It does make you a little more twitchy, but it could always be worse  I'm quite happy with my current job in materials science, it's much calmer. Kinetica has a new favorite as of 05:41 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 05:38
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