Yeah... saw that coming the moment there was any way for the contents of the beaker to directly contact the hot plate (no big ass double water bath), and there wasn't an ice bath present immediately drop the beaker into and get the fuck outta dodge.
Explosives are one of those things that provide for endless fascination to many and were a common topic in the earlier days of the internet, thankfully this now ancient post https://archive.is/JX6gl [alt: https://web.archive.org/web/20220117042510/http://www.operat...] with it's then highly unusual focus on safety precautions, temperature controls, and emergency measures killed and buried any possibility of me ever becoming curious enough to actually mess with that shit.
>Take a good look at your hands. I want you to admire them for a moment. The dexterity of the fingers, the sensitivity of the tips and the palms. Trace the muscles in each with your other hand, noticing how the ones in your fapping hand seem a little bit bigger and meatier. Think of all the wonderful things you use them for - pulling a trigger, petting a kitty, warming your girlfriend up for sexytimes, pimp-slapping a distinguished urban gentleman, holding your slippery dragon dildo.
>Do you want to keep those hands? Then read this section very fucking carefully
>>BTW, the cause of the accident turned out to be the Chinese knockoff beaker ... The "Pyrex" logo on another one bought at the same time, on closer inspection, read "Pyrox", with a tiny "made in China" text at the bottom. Instead of being made with Pyrex borosilicate glass, it was cheap soda-lime glass that couldn't stand up to heating. I never noticed the difference.
I can tell tales of very expensive prototype drones getting a hard landing due to a cheap Chinese solder joint breaking, people being injured on cheap Chinese carbon fiber bikes, and on and on and on, without going into the home-grown Chinese product scandals that killed children with bad infant formula, etc.
Yet, the idea persists that "you can get the same thing cheaper" and from production mills in a country where quality is literally a foreign concept.
The longer I live, the more I find that it really is true that "Quality is it's own reason.". Good tools and equipment pay for themselves in durability, usability, safety, efficiency, higher quality output, just plain pleasure to use, and perhaps most importantly, stupid down-time events that never happen.
Better to buy second-hand high-quality equipment than new lower-grade junk.
And yes, we should be decoupling from China - all engagement does is empower the CCP.
That is a really sobering story. At USC the lab guys were very adamant about "pull down the ventilator hood and evacuate" in the event that pretty much any didn't go as planned. People often wonder about annual or bi-annual safety training, it is for exactly for this type of situation, the goal is "don't think, just do what you were trained to do".
offtopic, but I love such old-school niche forums, there used to be so many diverse communities out there... Probably mostly wiped out by one and only Reddit by now : (
After I just watched the Mythbusters episode where they show some experiments that you can do at home.
One of the ones you can't is mixing water with dry ice. They put a rubber "hand" near a soda bottle, which they then fill up and cap tightly in the way you shouldn't do.
If you’re going to DIY explosives it would be smart to educate yourself about the safety precautions that actual explosive labs use. They are publicly available.
This was almost me after I lit off 3lbs of thermite. It instantly reacted and the heat blast burned off 5% of my skin. I got very lucky and completely recovered though.
by following the 5 whys analysis technique, it appears that the actual root cause of this accident is "trying stupid shit at home"... (maybe just buy some firecrackers for the reenactment next time? no pressing need to cook them at home Breaking Bad style...)
I did wonder whether his point was that he'd followed all the precepts of his training to the letter, and the dodgy beaker was the unsuspected weak foundation. But then, later in the thread...
> I did a lot of small things wrong, including working at 4am while I was dead tired.
Hmm. Well. Maybe not then?
(As a betting man, I will also bet that this was not the first time that he had done this.)
Yeah, I am going with the general idea that most disasters are really an accumulation of small mistakes, unlikely events, bits overlooked, that just happen to line up, all aided by the normalization of deviance. And it is frightening because each and every one of us is subject to this kind of thing unless we develop an unhealthy-in-all-other-respects obsession with repetitive checking. Familiarity brings contempt for safety procedures.
Was this posted because yesterday was the 4th of July - the infamous USA Independence Day holiday where people set off dangerous explosive fireworks?
This past July 4th was the first time I ever had a firework malfunction on me. A mortar blew up inside the tube as soon as the fuse burnt out. Typically they launch into the air first, then explode. The tube burst into smoky pieces that flew in every direction over my front yard. Someone could have lost an eye.
Yeah, losing your thumb on the only hand you have left is rough. There are prosthetics, but the thumb is extremely important for overall functionality of the hand.
Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) - - cousin of PETN, for which the detonation velocity of ETN is just above 8,000 meters per second - - while PETN det vel is about 8,300 meters per second plus, which is in the top 90% of highest velocity detonation velocities available from high explosives.
ETN is about 3 times more sensitive than PETN and is more sensitive to friction than the former mentioned compound. The decomposition of ETN is oxygen positive: C4H6N4O12 → 4 CO2 + 3 H2O + N2 + 3/2 O.
Why would any professional mess around with something that is 3x more sensitive than PETN ? Easier synthesis perhaps, but life changing or ending, if it detonates accidentally
PETN is the preferred explosive in the widely used "det cord", likely for a good reason, at 3x less sensitive.
from what I understand this is the mystery of the Alfred P Murrah building bombing. There was never any conclusion as to how the torpex acting as the primary explosive was obtained.
I seem to recall reading that McVeigh broke into the storage magazine(s) at some local rock quarry and stole dynamite and blasting caps, which would be plenty to set off his home made ANFO (actually ANNM IIRC, but I digress). Guess I'll have to do some research to confirm my memories.
I would actually expect professionals to come close to these kind of things more regularly. Seems like he left his guard down a little bit after working for years on these things.
American-made[1] "genuine" Pyrex is now also soda-lime, so just the name isn't proof enough any more, at least for cookware rather than labware.
[1]: and I think some stuff found in the UK, as I have a Pyrex-brand jugs and dishes that have got a distinct blue hue when seen edge-on.