From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Wed Dec 25 1996 - 12:36:45 MST
>
> I was fortunate in that I lived in a rural area during most of my
> experimentation. No one cared what we did out there.
>
> One of my horror stories was I accidentally discovered (very
> unintentionally!) how to spontaneously and rapidly decompose nitric acid.
A lot of undergrad chemistry students discover that (also,
unintentionally), when trying to ether-extract relatively strong nitric
acid... We had to use gas masks, to open the windows. The entire room was
dark brown.
> The red, noxious cloud of nitrogen trioxide would have covered a city block,
> all from 250mL of nitric acid. Thankfully, my parents weren't home at the
It is a very efficient, delayed-impact defoliant.
> time. Interesting reaction. Nothing happens for 10 or 15 minutes and then
> suddenly... (When synthesizing PETN, follow the temperature recommendations
> *precisely*!)
Tetranitropentaerythrite? Bad boy! Seriously bad boy. We never went
beyond nitroglycerine and ethylnitrate.
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
>
>
______________________________________________________________________________
|mailto:ui22204@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de |transhumanism >H, cryonics, |
|mailto:Eugene.Leitl@uni-muenchen.de |nanotechnology, etc. etc. |
|mailto:c438@org.chemie.uni-muenchen.de |"deus ex machina, v.0.0.alpha" |
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