Totally Sciencing Shit Up Tuesdays: Melts in Your Mouth AND in Your Hand

If I say I did a lot of reading during the time when I wasn't posting much, can we call it a sabbatical?  No?  Fine.

Anyway, while I was out and about, gadding about town in my labcoat and safety glasses, I read a book called "The Disappearing Spoon" by Sam Kean.  A quick summary would go something like "Kean investigates the history and position of all the elements on the periodic table."  It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but for someone with a chemistry degree and a mild interest in the science, I found it to be an enjoyable read.  The science got a little more intense toward the end of the book, but it's still worth a look if you enjoy reading about some of the strange histories that went on behind the elements on the periodic table.

Quick tidbit I picked up:  Did you know that Marie Curie had a bit of a reputation for being a cockmonster?  She was accused, multiple times, of putting the moves on various other scientists by luring them into closets to show how her radium samples glowed in the dark.  And, when in Rome.  Er, Paris...

Speaking of Paris, did you know France has a shitload of elements named for it on the periodic table?  The easiest one to identify is Francium, element 87.  As the segue leading into this paragraph referenced Paris, it, too, is recognized as Lutetium, element 71, which derives its name from Lutetia, the Latin word for the city that we now call Paris (which is named for a warrior from the Iliad...)  The other Franklandia-inspired element is Gallium, number 31.

Gallium is linked to France based on the old Celtic kingdom of Gaul, which Julius Caesar brought under Roman rule in a rather impressive fashion.  There is a second, somewhat contentious origin for gallium's name, but it's also French AND Roman.  The man who discovered gallium, Paul Emile LeCoq, allegedly named gallium for the Latin word gallus, which means rooster, which is what LeCoq means in French.  This has since been shown to be apocryphal, and the etymology is typically associated with Gaul.

In one of those cosmic sort of coincidences, any Latin student worth his or her snuff knows that "All Gaul is divided into three parts"...and gallium is found in the third column of the periodic table because it has three valence electrons.  There has to be a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.

Gallium is an interesting element in that it is a metal--it's shiny lustrous, can be drawn into a wire or molded into a sheet, conducts heat and electricity--and in the morning of a lovely spring day, it is a solid.  By the afternoon, it's a liquid.  In fact, if you hold it in the palm of your hand, it melts!  The melting point of gallium is somewhere around 86F (30C).

Well, this certainly screams for a demonstration, doesn't it?  Absolutely!  Enjoy!

Gallium can possibly be toxic, so don't try this trick at home, or, if you do, don't blame me when the cops show up asking questions.  I'll blame it on Sam Kean, anyway.

Gallium itself isn't used much, but gallium is such a whore for other metals that it alloys readily.  I've never seen this, but apparently gallium and sodium spontaneously mix together to form a T1000-esque puddle of liquid metal which is almost as lethal...just in a really prolonged exposure sort of way.  However, gallium salts make some damned fine blue LEDs, and gallium is responsible for the blue light of your Blue-Ray player (eh? eh?).  A gallium alloy is probably the shit in your thermometers, since mercury be all toxic and such.

Did I say spontaneously alloy?  I DID say spontaneously alloys!

Sure, that was a mild "explosion", but it burst nonetheless.  It did fit the proper definition of a gas (carbon dioxide) expanding within a container (the can) faster than the structural integrity of the container could withstand.  So, hooray Tuesdays!

Gallium also can make some high-quality mirrors, since it is shiny (as well as lustrous) and the surface is highly reflective.  You just need to make an alloy of it with another metal in order to avoid having your mirror get all melty when you're drying your hair.  Curiously, it "wets" whatever it is touching, so if you play with it too much you'll go blind you could end up with a fine, gray sheen on your hands.  Handle at your own risk, Solomon Grundy.

Gallium's size actually allows it to diffuse into the spaces between metal atoms in metallic lattice structures.  You can actually see this happening in the time-lapse video above (the second video); it's the disruption of the metal interactions that make the alloys brittle and/or liquid (depending on how much gallium is present).  For some strange miracle of nature, gallium just loves to get in there and intimately mingle with these other metals.

When it comes to alloys, this element certainly is that kind of gallium.  And we love it!

Totally Blowing Shit Up: Car Wars

With a tip of the hat to my good friend, Scope, I bring you this week's version of blowing shit up. Except...well...I'm not blowing shit up. But, I am ripping holes in things with cascades of molten metal.

A couple of weeks ago, back when I showed the pumpkin and the thermite reaction, Mr. C asked the question "It said it [thermite] could burn through the hood of a car, the engine block, and concrete. True?"

I could simply tell you the answer. But if Seymour Skinner has taught me anything about the conservation of angular momentum, it's that people learn better when you show them rather than explain to them. So, I humbly offer the video below.

Heh. They destroyed that car because it was French.

And, yeah, I know. There was no concrete under the car, so I didn't technically answer Mr. C's question. However, I can assure you that, with enough thermite, it will destroy the concrete underneath the car's engine block and bonnet. Remember, as they point out in the above clip, thermite burns at around two and a half thousand degrees Celsius. That's quite warm.

But, thermite's not just good for destroying the engine block of a car. And, frankly, I'd be doing you, my friends, a disservice if I didn't show you that thermite can also be used for the entire, wanton destruction of the entire car.

Don't believe me? Well, then you don't watch enough Mythbusters...


Sorry about the shitty quality of the film. It's the best I could find.

Okay, so Jamie said that thermite burns at 4500 degrees. That was in degrees Fahrenheit. Still, it's damned hot, as evidenced by the smoldering lump of bubbly steel left in the wake of Adam and Jamie's little "experiment."

So, if this is an experiment, then what is the reaction? Well, a "thermite" reaction is simply a metal oxide and another metal mixed together and, when heated, the oxide is transferred and a lot of extra heat is released during the course of the single-replacement reaction. For what we've seen twice above, this is the balanced chemical equation:

Fe2O3 + 2Al → 2Fe + Al2O3 + heat

I say the oxide is "transferred", but that may not be entirely true. The oxygen could, conceivably, come from the atmosphere. I don't know if anyone has done isotopic studies to make sure taht the oxide from the iron is ending up on the aluminum. Also, I don't know if 18O (O-eighteen) is stable at two and a half thousand degrees.

That's just one type of thermite, though. Another common form, used in welding (especially in the rail industry), uses copper instead of iron:

3CuO + 2Al → 3Cu + Al2O3 + heat

Anyway, the net product is one bitching hot reaction and, as Jamie says in the second video, it's really, really satisfying. Fortunately, the tires blew up during the course of the melting of the car with thermite. Hooray thermite! Hooray explosions!

I'm a Hard-Working, Yard-Working Man

So, one thing that I don't like about living in the South is that you have to mow in November. I know this because I've done it for the past six years. One year, when I had a particularly aggressive patch of thistles (ironic) and crab grass, I mowed on the first week of December.

Now, I understand that this is not Florida or Southern Texas or Southern California where you have to mow pretty much year-round (I imagine). This is North By God Carolina, but I'm still not used to it. In northeastern Indiana, it was time to put the mowers away in the middle of September. Sometimes, if Indian Summer falls just right, you might have to mow in October, but after that, you're sitting pretty until April.

Not so here. And while I don't mind mowing--especially if my wife is home to make sure the agents of entropy children don't kill each other--there's just something unright about mowing in November, at least in my mind. Shouldn't there be a law forbidding you from sweating and being cold at the same time? Usually, I come in from mowing and take a shower to feel cool and refreshed, not to warm up and refresh.

And that's the other thing I don't understand: it was a perfectly lovely day yesterday, warm and sunny with nary a cloud mottling the perfect blue dome of the heavens above. Yet, whenever I was in the shade and shadows of the many trees lining my yard, I felt cold. Not shivering cold, but cool nonetheless. And, I was sweating like the proverbial pig, or whore in church, whichever way you want to go with that. When I came in and shucked my pants and boxers, my ass cheeks were ice cold. They were more like ice cheeks. More ice, less ass. We won't even talk about how badly I was turtled.

My only beef with mowing--aside from the fact that it is suspiciously like real work--is that this is a time when I should be communing with my yard and the vast world around me. While I'm locked in the silence within my head, I should be able to ponder the world at large, or--better yet--do a little soul searching. However, this is not the case. Instead of some life-altering and self-improving ompahloskepsis, I think about work. Like, my job work. Like, the job that I'm trying to escape by being home and relaxing on the weekends work.

For instance, yesterday I thought about how I need to register and submit compounds 007 and 009 (yes, the former does have a license to kill...Trypanosomes!). I also thought about how I need to spot the 150 tubes in my hood and then take the cleaned-up compound on to the ring-closure this afternoon, if possible. And from there, I planned out the rest of the week depending on how much material I get out of the ring closure.

Argh! This is not something one should be thinking about for two hours on a Sunday afternoon in early November! Fortunately, while doing the yard on the western side of the house, I was able to put together the scene I'm envisioning for the next chapter in the book I'm currently working on, so when I finally finish up the second chapter tonight, I can get to working on this next one and fill out this scene that I've imagined.

In case you couldn't tell, I didn't really write much last night. Instead, I bitched about the Packers losing on the heels of Notre Dame being whupped on by Navy and how that tore at my poor, despondent heart. And then I put some new things up on the sidebars of the blog! Hooray!

It occurred to me that someone might want to go back and look at all of the Friday Morning Latin lessons. That someone might be me when I'm trying to reference an older lesson, for instance Aut futue, aut pugnemus!, so I thought I'd make it easier on myself and anyone else by just making a link that you can click on and access them at your leisure. Then, I thought the same about Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays. And finally, I thought the same thing about all my TMI stories, so I collected those, put them together, and then added in the five-part story about my stay in the hospital when I got my gall bladder removed back in 2006. For, you know, posterity's sake. And while I probably should have used Lilu's button for the picture linking to all my TMI goodliness, I opted for the Hobbes picture, you know, the class the joint up some. Plus, mooooog used it last week, and I thought it was pretty fucking awesome.

Those are all located over on the far right, beneath the Followers button, because, really, if it wasn't for the 140-plus friends I've accrued over the past couple of years, none of these stories would have made it to electronic print. Think of it was a way of giving back to you.

Now, get off my lawn. I just mowed it and I need to look nice until the end of March.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Clean Burning, Even Heating Propane

One of my guilty pleasures is being totally fucking lazy and not posting nearly often enough to satisfy the hordes of ravenous readers I have show up here every day King of the Hill. I'm not sure if it's Hank's no-nonsense approach to the world or his love of propane (I worked on cyclopropane in grad school) or just the fact that I pretty much look like him (though I don't need butt implants), but I'm a big fan of Hank Hill.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was sure that I'd get a little Bobby Hill, which was really quite a terrifying thought. I should also add to the story here that my wife is WAY better looking than Peggy Hill. Also, she doesn't get upset when I dream about grilling naked with the neighbors.

And...my urethra is not narrow, thank you very much.

Why am I bringing all this Hank Hill goodliness up now? It's all a lead in for this week's edition of Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays. And, well, I've already talked about how much I enjoy watching Brainiac, and I don't need to be reminded--again--of how they will sometimes augment their explosions for better television viewing.

In case you're not overly familiar with the Brainiac series, they featured a whole host of episodes in which they pitted everyday things against the awesome power of thermite. That's how I first heard of the ice explosion thing that I trotted out last week. They've done other things, but now matter how much stuff they vaporize/burn through/detonate, I'm still impressed with the fiery curtain of destruction that is the thermite reaction. Chemistry is fucking awesome.

Wait? What? Blowing my own horn? No. Never. Just reaffirming why I got into this business in the first place.

Back to the topic at hand. As I mentioned previously, last week I showed you what happens when you mix ice and thermite. I'll bet you were like, "Yeah, that's pretty impressive, there, indefatigable one, but what happens when you mix thermite and, say, a cylinder of propane?"

Well, wonder no more:

Explosions are full-frontal awesome.

Not much sciencey going on here. Actually, there is. The thermite, which, after it starts the reaction, is basically a cascade of molten iron, burning at a balmy 2500 degrees Celsius. This is hot enough to melt through the steel cylinder holding the propane. And, with propane having a flash point -104 degrees Celsius, thermite is also hot enough to ignite the liquified gas housed within.

Sorry that I made you do math, even if it was just "less than, greater than, or equal to".

The fun part here, of course, is that the gas ignites first, which acts as a wick for the liquid fuel lying within the cylinder. It explodes because the thermite only punches a thin hole in the tank, trapping most of the vapor and liquid inside. Once the fire hits the fuel, it's Kaboom time, and I'm not talking about a deliciously over-sugared breakfast cereal (though that would kick ass, too).

Mmmmmm...sugary bits of what used to be edible grains mixed with food coloring and marshmallows....

Hey, I wonder if that shit would blow up, too...

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Ice, Ice Baby

What's going on, everybody? Yeah, it's been a couple of weeks since our last installment of this lovely little series, but, you know, sometimes you need to take a moment from the explosive excitement and gather your thoughts. Hell, even Shakespeare took a little time after writing A Midsummer Night's Dream (I assume). That's right, I just likened myself to the Bard. Except, I have more hair. What? The Bard loved him a good explosion, as well, which is why his Globe theater burnt to the ground in 1613 after a cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII.

Did you see what I just did there? I combined several of my favorite things: Shakespeare, useless history lessons, explosions and Latin. Self-induced priapism is three, two, one...

Alright, let's get back on track. Originally, I saw this little piece of awesome on Brainiac, but since they've done the old bait and switch on explosions before, the "experiment" was repeated on Mythbusters. Satisfyingly, that smug grin was wiped off Adam and Jamie's faces (along with their so-called explosives expert) when they successfully caused a detonation by repeating the conditions previously reported.

The recipe for this explosion is easy: thermite + ice = explosion. Being that I'm not an expert, I'll let someone else tell you how to make thermite. Ice, I think, you can pretty much figure out where to get: water + cold = ice. Anyway, when you let the thermite reaction pour down onto a carefully constructed pile of ice blocks, it blows up. Don't believe me? Watch.

Now, why does this seemingly innocuous mixture of fire and ice result in explosive goodliness? Fuck if I know. Ask someone else in the field, and they'll give you some hand-waving explanation. My initial thoughts were that the ice sublimates under the extreme heat of the thermite reaction (up to 4500 degrees Fahrenheit), and such a rapid expansion of gas against a relatively solid wall of ice causes it to explode.

Another explanation is that the thermite induces the water which forms the ice to break down into its elemental units of oxygen and hydrogen. We've already seen the explosive nature of hydrogen a couple of times on here, and the mixture of the right amounts of hydrogen and oxygen form a really good explosion. My only problem with this is that hydrogen is very flammable. A curtain of molten metals burning down through a cloud of hydrogen should cause it to ignite fairly quickly. It doesn't seem like there would be an accumulation of sufficient amounts of hydrogen gas to cause an explosion like that.

Finally, a third explanation is that with the rapid sublimation of the ice into water vapor, it helps to aerosolize the thermite as it rains fire down through the ice blocks. Again, we've seen what happens when you mix fine powders and source of ignition. No one has definitively proved how this happens. In fact, I'm pretty sure that everyone who sets out to prove the mechanism of explosion ends up laughing and saying "What happens if we add more ice?"

The whole point of this is that, while the Brainiacs have been known to enhance their explosions, this is not one of those times. It's been repeated on Mythbusters with most satisfying results, AND it's been repeated several times by amateur scientists with video cameras and too much time on their hands. Not to mention a healthy love of explosions.

Now, if only other songs of ice and fire could finish so satisfyingly, I'd be happy. Or, better yet, maybe they could just, you know, finish.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Because You Demanded It

Unlike most radio stations in this country, which feature a boring glut of mediocre pre-programmed tripe, I'm willing to take requests. So, today's episode is brought to you by the letter C, as in, Mr. Condescending. He asked for it, and since I'm a whore for my readers, I'm obliging.

So, today we're going to explore the wonders of the Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption.

I'm sure you've all seen the episode of Mythbusters where Adam and Jamie were certain that some form of internet legerdemain was at work during the infamous Diet Coke/Mentos fountain symphony that started the whole craze in the first place. Of course, the idiots boys were proved wrong, and then they tried their best to get to the bottom of why this thing goes off like it does.

My first guess was that it was an acid/base reaction, the base coming from the Mentos (I was guessing some kind of preservative) and the acid being the carbonic acid dissolved in most sodas to give it fizz. Carbonic acid is basically the bastard child of water and carbon dioxide, and it's decomposition reaction looks like this:

H2CO3 -----> H2O + CO2

The problem is that it's not a chemical reaction at play here. Instead, as Adam and Jamie proposed, it's simply a matter of physics. They postulated that the tiny pits, grooves and swirls on the surface of the Mentos helped form tiny bubbles so quickly that they erupted in a fountain of Diet Coke. In a paper published in New Scientist of June from last year, a physicist from Applachian State University here in lovely North By God Carolina unraveled the mystery of the Diet Coke fountain.

Seems as though it's simply a matter of gravity, surface tension and the aforementioned nucleation sites on the surface of candies. The aspartame (the artificial sweetener) dissolved in the Diet Coke is perfect for breaking up the interactions between the water molecules making them more willing to give up the goods. The same trick works with college chicks and alcohol. The surface of the Mentos, which is covered with gum arabic, helps to make tiny bubbles quickly, and the specific gravity of the Mentos helps them to sink to the bottom of bottle, exposing themselves to more Diet Coke. Crushed up Mentos, despite their higher surface area, don't sink as quickly and therefore don't work as well.

That's a fancy way of saying that Diet Coke + Mentos = Fountains of Wayne Awesome.


Now, if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach him to fish, you've just lost yourself a fish junky that will pay you for what you catch. In the same vein, if you give a man some candies and a bottle of diet cola, he'll make a fountain. If you give a man a cap along with those candies and diet soda, he'll make a rocket. Robert Goddard would be so proud.


Well...he probably wouldn't have been proud of that guy.

As Scope pointed out last week, it's all fun and games until one of these rockets goes flying through the window of your house or your windshield...or your abdomen... Then things might not be nearly as funny. Well, at least not for you, but the rest of us will sure point and laugh at your misfortune. So, should you decide to try making your own amateur rockets, do it in a wide open area, alright?

Sadly, I have been proven wrong. Studies of the pH of the Diet Coke before and after the fountain have shown that the pH (measurement of the acidity of a solution) does not change, so the reaction has nothing to do with acid/base chemistry. Dammit! I hate being wrong, but I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong...just not to my wife.

Good thing I didn't tell her that it was an acid/base reaction. Ever. *whistles innocently* I'll be out back with some Diet Coke and fresh-makers if you need me.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Power of Sublimation

Remember how, whenever the criminal du jour needed to add that creepy effect to his fake ghost story, the villain from Scooby-Doo would always employ dry ice and water to create his ghostly fog. I think Scooby even made some donuts out of the dry ice fog once. Mmmm...carbon dioxide. So tasty.

I guess if you're a stoner and a dog--stone dog--then when the munchies hit, you have to respond, right?

When I was a lad, I remember my mother helping to make a parade for a float in the parade for our local festival. They needed to create a smoky effect coming out of a pot. For some strange reason, with all the papier mache, streamers and tissue all mounted onto a particle board frame with a tractor pulling it unsteadily down the road, they shied away from using actual fire. So, they opted for dry ice in water. I remember seeing the result--a few wisps of smoke-like vapor escaping the top of the cauldron--and being completely underwhelmed.

I've since learned that, if one wants a really good fog effect from dry ice, isopropyl alcohol--otherwise known as "rubbing alcohol"--gives a great plume of foggy carbon dioxide. So, there you go. In case you find yourself working on a float in the near future and you need a good, boiling plume of fog, drop some chunks of dry ice into rubbing alcohol. Just be sure to recharge the alcohol from time to time, because as it gets colder, the effect cools a bit. Heh. Pun.

Dry ice--which is frozen carbon dioxide--undergoes one of those rare phase shifts from solid to gas, called sublimation. Most of the time, we think of solids turning liquid first and then going to gas, but some things go straight from their solid form to their gas phase. Snow will do this sometimes in the winter, as well. The net result of the sublimation of dry ice to carbon dioxide gas is the nice fog effect.

We can also harvest the awesome power of the sublimation explosively. Don't believe me? Take a look.

For some reason, seeing that cinder block get blown to gravel really amused me. I think part of it is because I went to undergrad with this guy named Seville that someone once described as having "a personality like a cinder block." The damnedest thing was, that description was dead accurate.

Walking monoliths aside, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the power that this showed. If I were to guess, I would have thought that the force would escape up and away from the block where the bottle was not holding it. Shows what I know about explosive forces.

Now, I'm not telling you to go out and try this stunt at home, but after watching this, I would make damned sure that the dry ice bomb doesn't go off in your hand. Otherwise, you might be getting the Tyr experience without all the fun of tricking Fenrir.

See what I did there? Brilliant, no? I thought so, too.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: A Follow Up

Last week, I told you about the videos that we chemists like to watch where shit gets blown up. Don't be fooled: we love a good explosion as much as the next guy, we just prefer to keep the explosions out of lab and safely away from our eyes, nipples, nuts or other important body parts.

We enjoy the ability to rearrange matter to fit our whims and all, but we also like going home at the end of the day with the ability to count to twenty (or twenty-one).

Anyway, I found the video that I had referenced last week wherein the nitrogen triiodide went off with the touch of a feather, but if you watch, it's more like they smack that shit with the stick as opposed to just the feather. That's why I prefer the video I showed last week, wherein the explosion actually came when the feather merely tickled the powder.

Here, you be the judge:

Lame, huh? A contact explosive and you gotta go all Hulk SMASH with it. Ho-hum.

After posting last week's vignette, I went and said something to my boss about ammonia triiodide. He just started laughing. Now, my boss is a bit of a hell-raiser, which is why we get along so well. I figured my boss had a lovely little story about how he had gotten into trouble with NI3 earlier in his career, but no, it was his dad who had pulled some shit.

Seems as though his dad, when he was a kid, decided to make up some ammonia triiodide of his own. So, there he was in his room, toiling away, when his mom smelled ammonia and yelled through the door, "What the hell is going on in there?"

This startled my boss' dad, who then proceeded to spill the whole mess onto his bed, soaking it into his sheets. To hide the fact that he had done this, my boss' dad wadded up his sheets and tossed them in the laundry, said nothing, and went about his business. Well, his mom washed the sheets. Now, remember, NI3 is stable when wet. However, it apparently doesn't come out in the wash, and my boss' grandmother hung the sheet on the line to dry after washing it. The sheet, hanging in the sun and the breeze, dried out completely.

When my boss' grandmother came to take the laundry down, she did what any other red-blooded American does, and she snapped the sheet in the breeze in order to work out the crease from where the sheet had been hanging on the line.

This set off the explosive and, as my boss related to me, she was stuck holding a sheet of fire in her hands, which only came about after the concussion of all the NI3 going up at once.

To that end, let's get a better video in here.


I like how that one has multiple camera angles. Neat.

Also, remember how I talked about how my undergrad professor, Dr. Awesome, often had his roommates painting his keyhole with the explosive so that, when he put his key in the door, it gave a loud bang? Well, my boss' dad did that, too. But, he took it up a notch, and dipped the end of people's pencils in the stuff and let it dry, so that when they'd go to write something down--BANG!

Ah, chemistry...is there no end to your glorious amusements?

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Purple Powder of DOOM!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. It's something that some of my brethren in the chemical world would appreciate me keeping under wraps, but I can't do it any longer. The truth must be known.

The truth is this: General Chemistry isn't all gas laws and molality. We totally love blowing shit up! We even take times between drawing Lewis Dot Structures and calculating Gibbs' free energies to watch...movies. Movies about totally blowing shit up!

And you know what? We love those movies. It's probably a bad idea to give a bunch of pyros access to chemicals--even if it is in the relative safety of a supervised and monitored laboratory setting--but still. I would look forward to getting to see these little explosive vignettes from time to time rather than learn a new a creative way to transform an amount of something into moles of something.

That's how I learned about this little beauty here. I've seen maybe five or six different versions of the explosive reaction featured in this video, and really, it never gets old to me. To think that something could go off with just the touch of a feather? Awesome.

What you see there is nitrogen triiodide. The beauty of nitrogen triiodide is that, when it's wet, it's completely stable. When it dries out, the shit's as touchy as an overweight, middle-aged man about his car. As you can see, just brushing it with a feather can get it to go off. Later in my chemical career, my undergraduate professor for gen chem, quantitative analysis and p chem, Dr. Awesome, told me about how his room mates would whip up some nitrogen triiodide (he called it ammonia triiodide) and then those wily chemists would paint Dr. Awesome's keyhole (to his door, you sick fucks) with the wet stuff. That way, when he finally rolled back to the dorm, he'd stick his key in the door and BLAM! Instant Heart Failure!!!

He said he was usually tipped off when he would step in front of his door and he'd hear a faint "Paff!" come from under his foot where he had stepped on a spot where the nitrogen triiodide had dripped off the paintbrush and dried on the floor. We chemists know how to have an awesome good time.

Why is this so shock-sensitive? Take in a deep breath. 70% of what you just filled your lungs with is diatomic nitrogen. The reason why 70% of our atmosphere is comprised of this is because it's so stable. Chances are, there's a molecule or seven of N2 going into your lungs right this very second that went into Jesus' lungs, too. The only ones who are good at using this stuff are bacteria that live on the roots of bean plants, fixing nitrogen in the air so that the bean plants can use it, which is why beans are a good source of protein. The farts are just the bonus prize. The moral of this little side avenue is that nitrogen, for all the other magnificent compounds it makes, really just wants to bind with itself and hang out in the atmosphere. That's why nitrogen compounds make such wonderful explosives.

You'll notice the Purple Haze that hangs in the air after the detonations. That's the iodine from the explosive returning to its more stable and happy state of diatomic iodine, or I2. Since iodine is such a huge effing atom (trust me, it's huge in Atomic World), it tends to make easily-broken bonds, which is why the nitrogen can be freed so easily and readily. The net result of those easily-broken bonds is those pieces of filter paper totally being blown up!

The other cool part is that the crystals are a deep purple, most likely thanks to the influence of the iodine floating around in it. In comparison to all the stuff I make, which is either a white solid or an off-white solid or--sometimes!--a yellow solid, it's nice to see the elements from the right hand side of the periodic table (where all the druggies hang out) that can form up into some purty colors.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Dr. Poopy Pants Edition

So, last week, I played one of my favorite Brainiac clips, in which ampules containing alkali metals were dropped into water and comedy ensued. And by comedy, I mean explosions. Why the hell else would I post that on a Tuesday?

Well, someone came along and told us about how Brainiac has been known to enhance their explosions a wee bit. Oh, boo hoo! It's blowing shit up Tuesdays, man! When in doubt, use C-4. Or would that still be considered "cheating", Dr. Poopy Pants?

So, I went out and found another video detailing some of the fun times that can be had when mixing those metals found in the first column of the periodic table with water. In case you were wondering (and I know that you were), the first column is called the 'alkali metals', as opposed to the second column, which is the 'alkaline earth metals.'

When the alkali metals react with water, they produce a base (opposite of acid) and hydrogen gas. It's the hydrogen gas that's the problem here. You can see it bubbling out rather inconsequentially with the lithium and the sodium, but when you get down to potassium, the heat of reaction is such that it causes the produced hydrogen to ignite. Further down the periodic table and things get...well...more 'splosive. Let's find out.

Dang, that crystallizing dish didn't know what was coming, did it? Notice how they spelled cesium as caesium? I won't go into the hairy details about the name this week. Get it? Hairy? Fuck, I'm clever.

But wait, there's more! Underneath cesium there is another metal, francium! Time for another history lesson. Can you guess where francium was discovered? That's right, Gaul! In modern lingo, we call it France. It's also the rarest of the naturally occurring elements, with only an estimated 20-30 g of the stuff existing at any given time throughout the entirety of the Earth's crust. The reason it's so rare is because every isotope of francium is radioactive, and so it's constantly decaying into something else (radon and radium). It's longest-lived isotope is around 30 minutes. If you're looking for it out in nature, it can be found in ores of thorium and uranium.

Now, if the trend of reactivity toward water holds true as we travel down the periodic table in the first column, and since francium is under cesium, it should be more reactive than cesium. And cesium just totally blew the shit out of a crystallization dish. Let's see what happens when you mix francium with water, shall we?



Aye, that's the stuff!

So, sure, Brainiac might have augmented their explosions a little bit; I mean, Christ, we all get those emails in our spam boxes about augmentation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who clicks on the links--out of idle curiosity, naturally--right? Right? Why do I hear crickets?

Anyway, the point was that, even if Brainiac tossed in some extra shizz with their alkali metals, the stuff is still pretty potent. And it makes for a great Tuesday morning read, right? Right?

Where the fuck are all those crickets coming from? I should spray or something...

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays Once More

I've been bored with doing other crap around here, and frankly, I'm tired and sore from a weekend adventure. So, let's get to it and blow some shit up already.

This week's installment is some classic chemistry, right out of the jar of petroleum. Back in high school chemistry, my teacher showed us what happened when you mixed water and sodium. She took a wee piece of metal, dropped it into a beaker, and it spun around, fizzing and foaming. She then took a wee piece of potassium and added it to another beaker of water. This time is fizzed and buzzed around and then it burst aflame.

You had me right there, Mrs. B.

So, as you go down the periodic table, the alkali metals (first column) get more reactive toward water. Lithium is somewhat benign, whereas cesium is...well, let's find out, shall we.

Incidentally, "they" wouldn't let the Brainiac Squad have any francium because it's pretty radioactive stuff. Exploding it everywhere might not be the best idea, if you know what I mean, Jon Tickle.

And, did you notice, Tickle refers to cesium as the "emperor of the alkali metals"? Why does he say this, aside from the fact that it's the most reactive? Well, in Europe, cesium is spell "caesium". Look familiar? Well, look there. The beginning "cae" reminds me of another word. What is it? Something to do with salads...Oh, right, Caesar! Probably, that's what Jon Tickle is alluding to.

But wait! While cesium/caesium does get its name from Latin, it comes from caesius, which means "bluish-gray", not "came all over of the Gauls". Caesar's name is actually something called a cognomen, which is essentially a third name and is usually derived from some personality or character trait. Caesar's cognomen probably came from "caesaries", which means "hairy". A touch ironic, given that he was bald as coot later in life. When burned, cesium gives a bluish light, hence the reason for deriving its name from caesius (pronounced "kie-zee-us"). In fact, at first, its discoverers though it was no different than rubidium or potassium; if it wasn't for the blue light when burned, the discoverers would not have known they had a new element (at the time) on their hands.


Also, just for reference--and so that this doesn't become a Tuesday Morning Latin Lesson (perish the thought!)--cesium carbonate is my absolute favorite inorganic base. If I need to make an ether, I use an alcohol, an alkyl halide, and stir that shit up with a bunch of Cs2CO3. Voila! It's like magic.

TMI Thursday: Two for Number Two

So, I've been mulling this over a bit. It's not that I don't have plenty of good, juicy TMI stories. I mean, you've been reading my blog for, what, a couple days now? You realize that there's pretty much nothing about me that says "whoa, too far, I'm not going there."

However, it has occurred to me (read: sunk in through my thick skull) that there are some things most likely better off not said. Mostly these involve times when I've been inside someone, particularly my wife. Along those same lines, since she reads this, I'm sure she doesn't want to know about what I did with my ex-girlfriend in her ancestral bedroom back home while her father was most likely lying in his own bed, hearing us through the walls, and fuming. So, with those types of stories culled from the broad scope of things that I've done in my life that involve bodily functions of one type or another, we're pretty much left with stories about shit.

And, that's what we have today. A shit story. However, I realized that it wasn't all that great of a story, by itself. It's kind of amusing and all, mostly because I'm a dumbass, but it's still nothing grand and glorious. So, I'm giving you two tales of the toilet for the price of one this week.

Oh, don't get too excited. The second one isn't all that great, either.

STORY THE FIRST:

Anyway, about nine months ago, I was at work, calmly synthesizing my little heart out when suddenly I got that heavy feeling 'round back that told me I better find a commode quick or else we'd have a chemical spill of sulfur hydrogen iodine and tellurium. Yes, I know, that's spells "SHITe". Eat me.

So, I strip off my gloves and labcoat and then proceed wander down the way to the sanctum sanctimonium where I spent the next fifteen minutes contemplating what I ate the night before that could produce a smell so pungent and foul that the paint had begun to peel from the walls and the floor tiles slowly curled on themselves. After relieving myself of approximately fifty-three pounds of corn-addled excretia, I turned to behold what I had created. It was anything but good. And worse, with my ass having raised from the seat, I popped the seal over the bowl, and thus I unleashed an unholy and foul nebula into the room that threatened to overwhelm all creatures great and small within a twenty foot radius. Quickly, I wiped, flushed, flushed again, and once more for good measure. With tears streaming down my cheeks from the redolence hanging thick and blue in the air, I washed hastily and dashed from the chamber of secrets, seeking asylum in my office.

It just so happened that mere moments later, a tornado warning was issued for our county.

One of the "severe weather shelters" for our building happens to be...the men's toilet. It also happens to be the nearest shelter for my lab and office suite.

I ran, screaming, from the lab, shoving small children and old women aside. A friend of mine, who worked and sat next to me, made straight for the nearest shelter. I, however, bolted down the hall to one of the back offices, which are also tornado shelters.

A few minutes passed and the tornado warning was lifted. We returned, safely, to our offices and labs. My friend, who had sought refuge in the crapper, asked me, "So, why didn't you come in there with the rest of us?"

Now, honestly, after the tornado rips the building asunder, they're going to look for survivors and corpses among the rubble. Do you really want to be found dead in the privy? No, neither do I. However, I felt this answer would not suffice, nor was it wholly true.

"Well, you see, I know what I did in there twenty minutes before the warning, and I sure as hell wasn't going back in there."

"Ah," said my friend, with a bit of a smile, "well, you'll be glad to know that the smell has cleared...mostly."

STORY THE SECOND:

We had a bit of an odor issue the other day at work.

And, no, smart guy, it wasn't me.

It was a chemical. Somehow, it had gotten loose, and this particular brand of chemical--called an isocyanide, if you must know--is particularly foul. If you can smell it. I, however, cannot. It gives you headaches and causes you to want to vomit and gives you a sore throat. Nasty bastard, to say the least.

Anyway, shortly after arriving at work the other day, the two cups of coffee I had downed while driving the kids to school struck my lower abdomen with a vengeance.

"Hmmmm...must be 9:30," I thought.

I ambled down to my happy place and sat there pondering the ways and the whiles of the world for a bit. Finally, after releasing two very large, very healthy brown trout back to their natural habitats, I cleaned myself, took my leave of the place, washed my hands, and returned to my lab. I sat for a while, checked my email, and then called my wife and spoke to her for about twenty minutes. After I hung up, I worked on my notebook for a bit and then decided that I was thirsty. Oblivious, the entire time, to the fact that my lab had been evacuated until further notice.
See, the order had come down that we were to leave the labs and offices whilst I was in there discussing the pricing options with a man about his big, brown horse. Fortunately, after thirty minutes, I decided to go get some water from the break room. There, I found my labmates and team members, chatting idly about the stink in the lab and how they had to evacuate.

"So glad you could join us," one of them said.

"For what, now?" asked I, joyfully filling my water bottle.

"The smell in the lab. They've told us not to go in until it's resolved."

"Oh," I replied, a tad nonplussed, "Jolly good then."

I joined them at the table, then, suddenly understanding the plight of Charlie-in-the-Box, grape jelly squirt gun, Spotted Elephant and the rest of the Misfit Toys.

Although, I'm fairly certain, given my location when the evac orders came down, even King Moonracer wouldn't have scooped me up and whisked me away to his island kingdom.

For other truly tasteless tales of tawdriness, check out LiLu's joint at Live It, Love It: TMI Thursday.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Return

After a brief hiatus wherein I discussed conversations I've had with my dick hanging out and reports of large, feline predators stalking my property, we've returned with the series of posts most likely to get DHS rifling through my trash cans: Totally Blow Shit Up Tuesdays, Poobomber's Brainchild.

Today, let's take a look at what some people have dubbed the "methane tower". Here, we have an attractive dark-haired girl filling a sink with methane gas and a dorky side-kick with a flaming stick. Awesomeness ensues.

Okay, so it wasn't necessarily an explosion, but there was a towering flume and some bright lights. What happened was the attractive dark-haired girl took some soapy water and bubbled methane gas through it. Being lighter than water, the methane gas rose to the surface and was trapped in the soap bubbles. Once a nice pile of bubble has accrued, we touch a flame to it and *poof* we have a giant column of flame. No word on whether the Israelites are following it by night yet...

This is a classic combustion reaction, wherein we take a hydrocarbon (methane) in the presence of our friendly neighborhood gaseous oxidizer (oxygen) and we get the bane of Al Gore and the aliens from Signs (carbon dioxide and water, respectively).

CH4 + 2O2 + ignition source -----> CO2 + 2H2O + bitchin' light show

This is also the recipe for the "fire triangle":

Fuel + Oxidizer + Ignition Source -----> Increased Insurance Rates + Ostracized Catalysts

At this point, we should ask ourselves, where do we get methane? Methane gas parades about under the clever guise of "natural gas" and can be harvested from natural reservoirs, typically along coastal areas. It is a by-product of the natural decay of organic material, so the effervescence you see in bogs and swamps and such is a release of methane gas from material rotting on the lake bed. Occasionally, these will catch fire and float eerily over the surface of the water and are called "will-o'-the-wisp(s)".

Another source of methane gas is in your bowels. Yes, flatulence is primarily a release of methane gas (with some sulfurous compounds thrown in for taste). Essentially that means that, what we've seen here, is the lab equivalent of lighting farts...just without the feculent odor and singed ass- and grundle-hairs.

And you guys thought science was boring!

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: A Science Lesson

Did you miss me yesterday? Yeah, I missed you, too. I had one of them meeting things that the corporate world is so fond of. It was alright. I got free lunch, I didn't have to work in the lab, and I giggled and tittered and tee-heed at my boss' picture from a recent skiing trip in which his goatee--coated over with snot-drippings and snow--caused him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Wilford Brimley and/or Diabeetus Cat. The only drawback was the chair I was sitting on made my ass hurt. A lot.
Anyway, let's talk less of my boss' resemblance to old men with oatmeal fetishes and more about blowing the living hell out of some shit! Remember last week's post, in which a bunch of morons were blowing up a balloon and deafening themselves at the same time? Here's a link to take you back in time and refresh your memory, should you need it.

The comments section (spurred on by my own concrete lack of knowledge) brought about quite a number of guesses about what was in the balloon in order to cause it to detonate so grandly. I originally wavered between hydrogen and methane (both readily accessible); Scope thought it had to be something else, something incendiary; Hap thought that since it wasn't fully buoyant that it had to be something like methane.

This is where blogging life spills over into real life. My friend Joe--the third smartest person I've ever met, right behind Dr. John Nichols and Dr. Xavier Creary--knew exactly what was in the balloon. Apparently, when he was in undergrad, he had a professor who showed the kids how to make good homemade bombs. After Joe told me about this guy, I suddenly thought that maybe I would make a good teacher...except for that whole stare lingering too long over the comely lass in the front row with a short skirt. Wait, where the hell was I?

Oh, yes, last week's explosion. Apparently, if you combine hydrogen and oxygen in a stoichiometric mixture, you get a bang like that. It just flashes and "boom" and very little fire is given off from the explosion--it's gone in a flash. For instance, there's this; apparently, someone snuck a camera into Joe's professor's lectures:

Now, compare that to a "pure" hydrogen fire. There's plenty of sound and there's plenty of flame...which I've never understood because hydrogen itself burns with no visible flame, according to experts. Being as how I'm just a schlub, I'll take their word for it, but I've seen it burn this bright yellowish-orange flame. In fact, here's a pure hydrogen balloon going up.


Notice how that guy was all safety first, what with the gloves and the long pole to ignite the fire. Fuck safety glasses, he said. Tsk tsk. We'll have to write you up, Mister Hydrogen Balloon Man.

So, what's the difference? Apparently, the presence of oxygen is the key here. See, in the second balloon, the oxygen is pulled from the surrounding atmosphere. In the first, I assume that the hydrogen has been mixed with the correct amount of oxygen in order to undergo the accordant combustion or combination reaction (take your pick which you want, since--technically--this reaction falls into both).

How to know the amount of oxygen to mix in there? That's a good one. You need to balance you some equations. For instance, we know that what we have here is hydrogen reacting with oxygen. Hopefully, you also know that hydrogen and oxygen mix to form water. I'll also assume that you know that hydrogen and oxygen are both diatomic molecules. What, were you sleeping during chem class? So, we write the reaction like this:

H2 + O2 ---> H2O
Except, you'll notice, that on the left hand side of the arrow (which is used to show a reaction has taken place), you have 2 oxygens and on the right hand side, you have only one (remember, subscripts go with the element in front of them). Since matter cannot be destroyed nor created, we have what is called an unbalanced reaction. Therefore, we must put numbers out in front of our reactants (on the left hand side) and our products (on the right hand side) so that all the amounts of atoms match up. It should look something like this:

2H2 + O2 ---> 2H2O
So, essentially, what that tells us (other than the fact that you can't subscript on Blogger), is that you need twice as much hydrogen as you do oxygen in order to get the big ass bang that we saw last week and in the first video.

And who says science can't be fun? Oh, right. Everyone. And they'd be right.

And now...I'll let Chemgeek--a Real Professor of Chemistry--pick apart my post.

Six Word Saturday, the Second Coming

Okay, so I had some fun the last time I did this. But then, the last time I did this, I was talking about pie and blow jobs. How can you not have fun with that???

Anyway, today's six words:

I should have been a cowboy!

Back when I was in graduate school at Notre Dame, the very first reaction sequence I tried could be summed up in the words "epic fail". Nothing went right with the material I had made, and it was a simple reaction of adding a Grignard to an epoxide in the presence of a Lewis acid. Simple stuff, right (trust me, non-chemists, a monkey could do this shit).

Problem was...it never went.

I changed solvents (from anhydrous THF to THF from a still to THF run through our purification system); I changed the source of the Lewis acid (used three different bottles of copper(I) iodide from three different groups on the floor); I even remade the epoxide, thinking a different batch would help. Nothing. Still no product.

Now, for you non-chemists out there, a Grignard reagent is a kind of highly-reactive organometallic reagent, which means it mixes organics (carbon and such) with metals (bright and shiny and malleable) to give you something that will react wicked fast if you look at it cross-ways. That being said, you get a little water in there, and it all goes to hell. Fast. And being that northern Indiana in the summer is a bit...what's the word...*snaps fingers*...right, humid! A little bit of moist air and the bottle of vinyl Grignard you've got suddenly becomes magnesium-based sludge.

I suggested as much to my graduate school advisor. I know. The audacity of a first-year grad student saying "Maybe this highly reactive and water-sensitive reagent over here is the problem." My advisor insisted I was full of beans--or shit, take your pick--and gave me some different conditions to try, all using the same bottle of vinyl Grignard, all the while reminding me that what I was trying to do was a "literature reaction" (which, essentially, means that someone else has already figured this out, all I had to do was follow the recipe like a good monkey). Finally, after one of the last conditions still failed to yield the desired product, I closed my eyes, rested my head against the cool hood sash and said to myself (because everyone else in the lab was down at Happy Hour) "I should have been a cowboy..."

Yes, it was about that time that the Toby Keith song was popular, and if you've ever spent any amount of time in Northern Indiana, you'll know that country music is the aural poison of choice. Plus, I kind of liked Toby's sweet mullet.

To cap that off, I skipped work the next day (it was Saturday) and moved my stuff from my old, crappy apartment into the house I was sharing with three other guys. After moving, I was too tired to go to work, and--honestly--too pissed off with chemistry to worry about it. Unbeknownst to me, my advisor was in, running that exact reaction.

I came in Monday morning to find him standing near my hood. Figuring I was fired, he simply stated, "That bottle of Grignard is bad. Order new." And left. Vindicated, I ordered the new Grignard (actually, I ordered two, the bromide and the chloride). The reaction worked just fine after that.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I dislike my job. I love my job. I love the people who work with me. I love the project I'm working on. I might not bust out of bed every morning like Spongebob screaming "I'm ready!", but I do hop out of bed and head off toward work and do my job with a big, dumb smile on my face.

However, every so often, a cascade of events affects me in the lab that goes so far beyond absurd that it thrusts itself deeply into the realm of situational comedy. This past week and a half has been one of those eras in my life. See, I've had this compound that we've really wanted to make, and I've made it. Problem is, it's not getting pure. And, I've tried everything. I tried traditional chromatographical ways of purifying it. Still dirty. I've tried recrystallization. Still dirty.
It might not be thermally stable, so I haven't tried sublimating and depositing it. Finally, I decided to work on the HPLC--essentially, a robot whose soul sole purpose in life is to purify compounds. Problem was...when I took my stuff up in methanol (a very polar solvent)...it didn't fully dissolve. Thinking that I would help it along with a few drops of DMSO (an even more polar solvent), my stuff suddenly crashed out of solution. Yes, I recrystallized my material with methanol/DMSO. My supervisor laughed and said, "Well, maybe we can get a paper out of that..." I took the polar solvents off and tried again. This time, however, I decided to see what would happen if I added water, since the HPLC uses water to purify the compounds.

My reaction essentially puked orange-white stuff onto the sides of the flask.

Heaving a heavy sigh, I shook my head, looked at my friend Joe, and simply said:

"I should have been a cowboy."

My Apotheosis

Right after you all get done worshipping the Massive Pork Log, you can bow down to me.

I, of course, require hefty donations to support the church of me. Also, I demand sacrifices or porcine life forms. The recipe is in the previous post. And, of course, ladies, I require that all worship of my Uber Cool Nerd Godliness be done topless at least, naked if you're a true follower. Photographic (heavy on the graphic part, please) proof will be required. Often.

And if not, let the vindictive smiting begin.

And, should you happen to be, I dunno, married to me...I think you just found your Zeus character. And dinner better be on the table when I get home, lest the smiting begin anew.

...ugh...

The First Rider continues his parade through my little family.

While Tank has gotten better (he only now has a very loud cough, wherein he only sometimes remembers to cover his mouth), and Cookie has stopped throwing up liquid of a violent yellow, I know am fully encrusted with the Ick.

It started yesterday simple enough: cough, cough, spit, ewww, that's gross. Last night it spiraled down into a fever. I think I've shaken the fever (Diet Dr. Pepper, panacea for the masses) and I'm not wracked with chills like I was yesterday afternoon.

I initially started out using some 'old home remedies'. Unfortunately, the hen hasn't really been sucking much of the Ick out of my lungs (perhaps I chose poorly in opting for a Rhode Island Red) and drinking my own urine only made my breath smell. Worse. I also went out a punted half a dozen cats--not so much for their ability to heal me, but more for my own personal entertainment. Laughter is the best medicine, so I guess it did serve a purpose. Meow. I also brewed up a tea made from various herbs I found around my yard, but about fifteen minutes after imbibing, I just sat there and giggled while wondering why my fingers don't fing.

Finally, I decided to live life by my second mantra: better living through chemistry. I pounded some mucinex, downed some Day-quil (which promptly knocked me out), and drank lots of water, ginger ale, and the aforementioned panacea for the masses. I repeated the ritual last night before bed, this time adding a healthy slather of Vap-o-rub. My wife looked over and wondered why I was rubbing it there, and when I gave her a knowing, lascivious chuckle, she ran screaming from the room. I haven't seen her since. If anyone sees a large-chested redhead with strained vocal chords and eyes the size of dinner plates, send her back this way, please.

My tour of the pharmaceutical aisle has paid off as I now have broken my fever and I'm coughing up much less phlegm. But that which I do cough up is a lovely shade of orange yellow. Puts me in mind of Play-doh. Guess I know what the kids are getting for Christmas.