Ping: A Chemist

[Abdul Alhazred]

C₈H₈ of course.

[Anaxagoras]

Is it octane?

[ed]

Physicists can have fun too (admittedly less spectacular, but neat):

errrr ... you wanna rethink that comment?

[Anaxagoras]

Is it octane?

Guess not. This is octane:

[Bruce]

The small blue ones are hydrogen, the big ones nitrogen, oxygen is red. But sulfur also gets a black sphere…

Do you know this:

Carbon prefers 5 and 6 membered ring formation. A 4 membered ring would be very difficult to achieve. I would say it's impossible, but as soon as you say something is impossible, some mad scientist makes it his his goal in life to prove otherwise and ends up creating things like



So I'll just say that a cubic buckminsterfullerene is unlikely.

The smallest one ever made that I'm aware of was made of all 5 membered rings:

[Witness]

So I'll just say that a cubic buckminsterfullerene is unlikely.

Ha ha! Got you there…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubane

(The synthesis steps are quite fascinating.)

[Bruce]

So I'll just say that a cubic buckminsterfullerene is unlikely.

Ha ha! Got you there…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubane

(The synthesis steps are quite fascinating.)

What'd I tell ya.....from the article:

Before this work, researchers believed that cubic carbon-based molecules would be too unstable to exist.

Somebody said it was impossible, then Phillip Eaton and Thomas Cole said fuck nature and it's silly rules, and what did they make?

Having high energy but kinetic stability makes cubane and its derivative compounds useful for controlled energy storage. For example, octanitrocubane and heptanitrocubane have been studied as high-performance explosives.

Ha! The fools at the academy said it couldn't be done, but after years of burning through all our grant money by experimenting with ludicrously dangerous and unstable chemistry, we gave God the finger and created something that shouldn't exist. Behold, we bring you......



Good find, Mr. Witness.

I'm having fun perusing through the aftermath of the discovery of cubane. It made me wonder why cubane isn't as well known as TNT and other explosives. Turns out that making it is dangerous, expensive, and the end product isn't as explosive as originally though because, heh, it's kinetically stable.

So even after the grand reveal of cubane, the scientific community collectively said "meh" and promptly forgot about them. Ouch.

I tried searching on youtube for a video of a cubane explosion, or even an octanitrocubane explosion, but apparently no one has attempted to make the stuff since the invention of Youtube. I did find some fun stuff while looking, like this:

[Witness]

Good find, Mr. Witness.

I actually heard about it when I was still a student: the brother of on of my friends did research in chemistry and got very excited about the new synthesis of cubane.

I liked the vid about nasty stuff; here's another reminder about the dangers:

Karen Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 – June 8, 1997) was a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the organic mercury compound dimethylmercury (Hg(CH3)2). Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn

Keep safe, Bruce!

[Bruce]

I remember when that happened. It was the year I graduated from undergrad. My own brushes with death in the lab include a sodium explosion, a peroxide explosion, and accidentally boiling potassium cyanide, which released cyanide gas.

Yes, it does smell like almonds.

[Witness]

So there's a selection parallel to the exams?

[Abdul Alhazred]

I remember when that happened. It was the year I graduated from undergrad. My own brushes with death in the lab include a sodium explosion, a peroxide explosion, and accidentally boiling potassium cyanide, which released cyanide gas.

Yes, it does smell like almonds.

Emphasis added.

If you live, you graduate. Right?

[Bruce]

Used to be that way.

Kids have it so easy these days.

[Grammatron]

[Bruce]

What it is??

[Fid]

I remember when that happened. It was the year I graduated from undergrad. My own brushes with death in the lab include a sodium explosion, a peroxide explosion, and accidentally boiling potassium cyanide, which released cyanide gas.

Yes, it does smell like almonds.

So you escaped the California gas chamber. How old are you anyway?

[Fid]

What it is??

Etchings with a floridic acid compound?

[Grammatron]

What it is??

[Fid]

Imagine doing this to Palomar's 200" back in the day.

[Bruce]

I remember when that happened. It was the year I graduated from undergrad. My own brushes with death in the lab include a sodium explosion, a peroxide explosion, and accidentally boiling potassium cyanide, which released cyanide gas.

Yes, it does smell like almonds.

So you escaped the California gas chamber. How old are you anyway?

43

[Abdul Alhazred]

Chloroform by the quart in your kitchen!