
What This Here Compound Needs Is Some Hydrogen Peroxide - CarolineW
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/09/27/what-this-here-compound-needs-is-some-hydrogen-peroxide
======
redthrowaway
Lowe's articles have the delightful quality of bringing in people who don't
understand the chemistry, and making them feel like they're part of something.

I never got into o-chem, and I certainly don't know anything about excited
groups that want to blow off some steam and relax. But I can read Lowe's posts
and feel like I'm in on the joke, and that's pretty rewarding in and of
itself.

~~~
amelius
To be honest, the talking about explosions turned me off.

Surely there are more interesting topics to get somebody excited about
chemistry?

~~~
mikeash
This concept of "more interesting than explosions" confuses me greatly.

~~~
amelius
It's like trying to make somebody enthusiastic about computer science by
having a long monologue about the wonders of the "rm -rf" command.

:)

~~~
mercer
It sometimes depresses me a little that on the best ways I know to 'impress'
(but only barely) friends of mine with my line of work is to do a 3D css
transform/transition on whatever website they're currently looking at...

Thankfully there's been the occasional friend who got really excited at the
thought of being able to use their browser's devtools to change things on the
page through css or javascript.

~~~
mikeash
Maybe you could impress them by showing how you can use devtools to forge a
tweet or bank balance or boarding pass.

~~~
nkrisc
That's also a great way of teaching people how websites/servers/browsers work.
They're not looking at "the actual" webpage on their computer, just an
instance of it that their browser downloaded onto their own computer.

They can mess with it all they want, they're not really changing anything.

~~~
Bartweiss
Teaching people this is also a great lesson in "screenshots of a webpage do
not prove anything was actually written". More than once, I've found myself
explaining that yes, that picture looks very convincing and has the right
background image, but it's still totally fake text.

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coldcode
As a grad student I somehow turned my experiment under the hood into an
evacuation of the entire building, by reducing DMSO to DMS and discovering
that Dimethyl Sulfide makes a great building emptier, especially since the
hood system sucked (or rather did not). Two Nobel winners and a host of
professors and students abandoned the building post haste and they made me go
back in to look up whether it was dangerous or not (this was before mobile
devices). Thankfully it stinks something fierce but is not fatal likes its
cousin, Hydrogen Sulfide.

No wonder I decided programming was safer, code might blow up but it doesn't
Blow Up. I also worked in the lab with a guy who worked with ether and smoked
in the lab.

~~~
digi_owl
At least until said code controls something that involves massive amounts of
energy (mechanical or otherwise).

Edit: Btw, stinky chemistry sounds like something right out of Max Gergel's
memoirs. A book that Lowe mentioned:

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/27/max...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/27/max_gergels_memoirs)

And that i have been meaning to finish reading.

~~~
Bartweiss
If you've been enjoying Gergel, _definitely_ give Ignition! a read, also a
Lowe recommendation. It's a first-hand account of early rocket fuel research,
and it is hair-raising like no chemistry I have ever heard of.

[http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)

~~~
digi_owl
Already have, and loved every page.

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russellbeattie
Nice! This is the first "Things I Won't Work With" in a couple years! If you
haven't read Lowe's other posts in that category you're in for a treat:

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thing...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things-
i-wont-work-with)

~~~
IanCal
This is an absolutely wonderful series, one I find myself re-reading in their
entirety every time a link is posted. I should set up a script to
automatically book off an afternoon at work if I open one of the links at
lunch.

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Symmetry
If any of you would like to experience something like that article but at book
length here's a link to a PDF of "IGNITION ! An Informal History of Liquid
Rocket Propellants".

[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)

~~~
lorenzhs
Oh yes, I can thoroughly recommend that book. The author's dry descriptions of
things going horribly, _horribly_ wrong are extremely amusing. I found the
second half to be a lot more chemistry and a lot less accidents than the first
half (which is definitely the more amusing one). It's long out of print,
sadly, and used copies go for obscene amounts (there's one on Amazon for
$2099, and no I didn't forget the decimal point), and it seems to be in the
public domain anyway (at least the science madness library claims so), so you
probably don't have to feel bad for just grabbing the pdf.

Here's a nice teaser quote from Chapter 3, "The Hunting of the Hypergol":

 _Came the day of the first trial. The propellants were hydrazine and WFNA. We
were all gathered around waiting for the balloon to go up, when Uncle Milty
warned, "Hold it—the acid valve is leaking!" "Go ahead—fire anyway!" Paul
ordered.

I looked around and signaled to my own gang, and we started back- ing gently
away, like so many cats with wet feet. Howard Streim opened his mouth to
protest, but as he said later, "I saw that dogeating grin on Doc's face and
shut it again," and somebody pushed the button. There was a little flicker of
yellow flame, and then a brilliant blue-white flash and an ear-splitting
crack. The lid to the chamber went through the ceiling (we found it in the
attic some weeks later), the viewports vanished, and some forty pounds of
high-grade optical glass was reduced to a fine powder before I could blink.

I clasped both hands over my mouth and staggered out of the lab, to collapse
on the lawn and laugh myself sick, and Paul stalked out in a huff. When I
tottered weakly back into the lab some hours later I found that my gang had
sawed out, carried away, and carefully lost, some four feet from the middle of
the table on which the gadget had rested, so that Paul's STIDA could never,
never, never be reassembled, in _our _lab._

~~~
digi_owl
The book came up in what is likely the most shared article in the series.

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)

You know you are in for a interesting day when you are working with something
that digests asbestos...

------
krige
Lowe's writing is, as always, phenomenal, just the right mixture of hard facts
and tongue-in-check humour.

The part about grinding the second compound down for X-ray though - I second
his thoughts: in just what state of mind you have to be to even _consider_
that? Did they have to draw straws?

~~~
Bartweiss
My favorite bit of most of these articles his horrified read-through of the
characterization. The list of drop tests and reaction descriptions that these
lunatics are willing to try is always truly impressive.

------
pdkl95

        It expands your horizons while
        it expands your fume hood
    

LOL! Derek Lowe's posts about crazy chemistry are always a joy to read.

~~~
bambax
> _But I have to admit, I’d never thought much about the next analog of
> hydrogen peroxide. Instead of having two oxygens in there, why not three:
> HOOOH? Indeed, why not? This is a general principle that can be extended to
> many other similar situations. Instead of being locked in a self-storage
> unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three? Instead of having two liters
> of pyridine poured down your trousers, why not three? And so on – it’s a
> liberating thought. It’s true that adding more oxygen-oxygen bonds to a
> compound will eventually liberate the tiles from your floor and your windows
> from their frames, but that comes with the territory._

From
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/things_i_wont_work_with_peroxide_peroxides)

~~~
digi_owl
I could have sworn he has one about long chains of nitrogen as well.

An eyeopener for me, as even though i grew up on a farm i never considered
nitrogen to be so "lively".

Edit: Ah, found it.

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/10/14/who...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/10/14/whoa_time_to_clean_the_fishtank_uh_root_canal_appointment_look_at_the_time)

~~~
cr0sh
You grew up on a farm and never decided to make a bit of ANFO?

~~~
digi_owl
Didn't have the right friends or reading material i suspect.

~~~
cr0sh
Yeah - I was just ribbin' ya a little.

:)

To someone who didn't know, the idea of those two common "farm items" being
mixed to produce an explosive material wouldn't be expected or thought about
(unless your dad or relative you lived with was into "stump removal" or such
and too cheap to purchase the real stuff).

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EdwardCoffin
Could anyone confirm for me my suspicion that the phrase _repeat this paper_
(he said "if I had to repeat this paper") is standard jargon for a lab
following the procedures described in a paper to replicate the results?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I believe so, yes.

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dao-
"What This Here Compound Needs Is..."

I'm having a hard time reading this. Is this proper English? Serious question
from a non-native speaker.

~~~
jstanley
It means "What this compound needs is..."

"this here" is a colloquialism in some places in (I think) the US.

~~~
qbrass
It's from Southern American English.

~~~
douche
It's really part of a sort of a generalized redneck/rural argot, at this
point. I'm from the farthest northern stretch of the Appalachians, a stone's
throw from Canada, and quite often flummox people when I tell them I'm not
from West Virginia or Kentucky.

~~~
stan_rogers
That's because it didn't originate on this side of the pond. You can also find
it in the West Country dialect(s); think Hagrid, Samwise Gamgee or Robert
Newton's prototypical movie pirate captains (Long John Silver and Blackbeard).
Poke around England a little more, and you'll probably find it elsewhere as
well. Standard English really is a much smaller and lesser-used dialect than
most literate people think it is.

~~~
lostboys67
Strictly Sam wise should probably have used black country dialect given where
JRRT grew up - its the Rural version of a Birmingham (UK) accent.

But I suspect they would have had to subtitled it :-)

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mattkevan
Always happy when a Things I Won't Work With pops up on HN.

Lowe's writing is a delight.

~~~
logfromblammo
It has all the morbid fascination of watching someone intentionally light
themselves on fire, but without the guilt and horror of the certain death.

"Wait, did you say _azido_ azide? Let me (very carefully) fetch my popcorn."

------
mankyd
I envy Shreeve’s and Matzger's groups. Not that I want to do what they're
doing, but man I would love waking up to an article written about me like
this. I can guarantee that their teams have a getting a huge kick out of this.

------
tener
Serious question: why on Earth would someone want to produce such compounds?
Are there any actual applications of this work?

~~~
xg15
Cave Cohnson puts it nicely, but to add some more detail, I think a lot of
that research was motivated by rocket science (the actual one).

Suppose you want to increase the vertical speed of your rocket. If you just
put in bigger engines and a larger fuel tank, you wouldn't have won anything:
Sure the engines will provide more force, but you also increased the mass that
the force has to move.

What you actually want is a more efficient fuel that gives you more power for
the (approximately) same mass - you quite literally want more bang for your
buck.

Because the required forces and mass constraints are so extreme, the number of
possible fuels that are efficient enough for your purposes are quite limited -
they are commonly known as "explosives".

As rockets with more cargo space are needed, so grows the need for even more
efficient fuels - driving the development of compounds that are even more
hellishly explosive than their predecessors.

~~~
Bartweiss
Many of Lowe's 'Things I Won't Work With' entries (or the explosive ones at
least) show up in _Ignition!_ as rocket fuel attempts. Even the ones that are
utterly idiotic like ClF3, which will happily light asbestos on fire.

A lot of the things people make turn out to be useless, but the dream of a
quality rocket fuel (high energy, dense, hard to trigger) keeps things going.

~~~
gozur88
From what I can tell there are all sorts of ways to produce highly energetic,
unstable compounds, which are mostly curiosities. But if you can find a highly
energetic _stable_ compound it has all sorts of industrial and scientific
uses.

------
blauditore
That was quite hard to read because commas look very similar to periods with
that font, at least on my screen.

Note to future self: Never use Benton Sans for a website.

~~~
PeCaN
Firefox at least has an option to force pages to use your selected fonts,
which I highly recommend.

~~~
blauditore
Do you mean reader view (which removes all styling, background images etc.) or
something else?

~~~
PeCaN
Options → Content → Advanced (under Fonts & Colors) → Uncheck ‘Allow pages to
choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above’.

This does break icon fonts, but icon fonts are IMO a bad idea and should use
SVG instead.

~~~
blauditore
Thanks, found it. Actually, I like the possibilities of web fonts quite much,
but there are always people who just do it badly. Also, icon fonts are great
to get somewhere quickly, even though not really best practice.

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avmich
I don't quite understand that aversion to handling concentrated hydrogen
peroxide.

Another opinion is here -
[http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/peroxide.html](http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/peroxide.html)
.

~~~
fr0sty
His H2O2 link is to this:
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/things_i_wont_work_with_peroxide_peroxides)
which talks about some more exciting peroxides.

------
CamperBob2
What the people who designed this website need is a job at McDonald's.

