Azathoth Prime posted:

This is porn for chemists, isn’t it?

Phy posted:

Goons usually slam XKCD but I think today's is thread-relevant, because I know we've looped back to it a few times

Phy posted:

Goons usually slam XKCD but I think today's is thread-relevant, because I know we've looped back to it a few times

Zopotantor posted:

We haven’t done dusty plasma fission fragment engines, though (I think).

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

Nuclear salt / water rockets are better in every way.

ThisIsJohnWayne posted:

They don't have the word "plasma" in them

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

You're right. The way the name is typically written is "nuclear salt water rocket" and it makes people think "oh. Water rocket. That's neat. How does that work? It must be safe. Water is safe." They don't realize it's a nuclear salt that's going supercritical in enough water to keep the thing from killing you, then throwing it out the back.

"Dusty plasma fission fragment" just sounds dangerous right up front. Note the words "fission" and "fragment," which have historically had a bad time appearing in the same sentence in most news media.

90s Cringe Rock posted:

There's an xkcd for that too, of course.

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

You're right. The way the name is typically written is "nuclear salt water rocket" and it makes people think "oh. Water rocket. That's neat. How does that work? It must be safe. Water is safe." They don't realize it's a nuclear salt that's going supercritical in enough water to keep the thing from killing you, then throwing it out the back.

"Dusty plasma fission fragment" just sounds dangerous right up front. Note the words "fission" and "fragment," which have historically had a bad time appearing in the same sentence in most news media.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I tried making valentines with the sign maker:

EasilyConfused posted:

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

You're right. The way the name is typically written is "nuclear salt water rocket" and it makes people think "oh. Water rocket. That's neat. How does that work? It must be safe. Water is safe." They don't realize it's a nuclear salt that's going supercritical in enough water to keep the thing from killing you, then throwing it out the back.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I made a thread for OSHA valentine signs. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3958995

Hammerite posted:

Mustached Demon posted:

Karen Wetterhahn's long lost time child?

OwlFancier posted:

From my experience doing chemistry at college that's what you end up doing anyway but there are sometimes a lot of steps involved.

Platystemon posted:

I have described NSWRs as “the demons want to start a riot really badly but we’ve segregated them in a maze of twisty little passages so we think they won’t be able to till the door hits them in the arse on the way out”.

This is in contrast to bombs, where “the miniature sun won’t get out unless we hammer the sleeping demon metal with explosives just so. ”

I stand by that description.

MazeOfTzeentch posted:

That's a username and post combo if I ever saw one

MazeOfTzeentch posted:

That's a username and post combo if I ever saw one

GWBBQ posted:

I know I harp on it every time her name comes up, but everything you read is a very toned down version and I would quit my job and move to some remote island if they ever brought organomercury compounds into the same building I work in.

Just use passive voice and you're good.

wrong (for many reasons): "I poured 1.00ml of UDMH into a beaker containing 2.63ml of N2O4 and it blew the gently caress up"

right: "the fire alarm system was activated due to a thermal excursion following the addition of 1ml of UDMH to 2.63ml of N2O4. No injuries occurred as we were wearing our kevlar labcoats."

quote:

I was led to this discovery, by a late assertion, that hydrogen is the basis of the muriatic acid: it induced me to attempt to combine different substances with hydrogen and oxygen. With this view, I mixed such substances with alcohol and nitric acid, as I though I might (by predisposing affinity) favor, as well as attract, an acid combination, of the hydrogen of the one and the oxygen of the other. The pure red oxide of mercury appeared not unfit for this purpose; it was therefore intermixed with alcohol, and upon both, nitric acid was affused. The acid did not act upon the alcohol so immediately as when these fluids are alone mixed together, but first gradually dissolved the oxide: however, after some minutes had elapsed, a smell of ether was perceptible, and a white dense smoke, much resembling that from the liquor fumans of Libavius [stannic (III) chloride], was emitted with ebullion [sudden, violent boiling]. The mixture then threw down a dark-coloured precipitate, which by degrees became nearly white.

This precipitate I separated by filtration; and, observing it to be crystallized in small acicular [needle-shaped] crystals, of a saline taste , and also finding part of the mercury volatilized in the same white fumes, I must acknowledge that I was not altogether without hopes that muriatic acid had been formed, and united to the mercurial oxide. I therefore, for obvious reasons, poured sulfuric acid upon the dried crystalline mass, when a violent effervescence ensued, and to my great astonishment, an explosion took place. The singularity of this explosion induced me to repeat the process several times; and, finding that I always obtained the same kind of powder, I prepared a quantity of it, and was led to make the series of experiments which I shall have the honour to relate in this paper.

quote:

Desirous of comparing the strength of the mercurial compound with that of gunpowder, I made the following experiments, in the presence of my friend Mr. Abernathy. Finding that the powder could be fired by flint and steel, without a disagreeable noise, a common gunpowder proof [a testing device for measuring the strength of gunpowder], capable of containing eleven grains of fine gunpowder, was filled with it, and fired in the usual way: the report was sharp, but not loud. The person who held the instrument in his hand felt no recoil; but the explosion had laid open the upper part of the barrel, nearly from the touch-hole to the muzzle, and struck off the hand of the register, the surface of which was evenly indented, to the depth of 0,1 inch, as if it had received the impression of a punch.

(...)
A gun belonging to Mr. Keir, an ingenious artist of Camdentown, was next charged with 17 grains of the mercurial powder and a leaden bullet. ...

Computer viking posted:

I kind of like the old-old science papers for this - they tell a much more realistic story, at the cost of being more rambling. See e.g. [url="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1800.0012"]
So, basically: "I heard there's hydrogen in muriatic acid, so I started pouring acids and alcohols on compounds I had lying around. One of them blew up so well I had to try it a few more times. Then I grabbed a friend and started loading it into guns."

The Lone Badger posted:

This sounds like Drunk Chemistry.

quote:

I therefore, for obvious reasons, poured sulfuric acid upon the dried crystalline mass

Shellception posted:

There is a certain terrifying undertone to old-timey chem papers and manuals off-handedly mentioning how different compounds taste

Gobbeldygook posted:

Chemists were working in the dark until the development of chromatography. Smell and taste were a vital part of identifying what you were working with and how reactions were progressing.