I am not a chemist, but I love this guy's writing:
"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?"
If you can find a copy, you might like the book Ignition! by John Clark (some libraries have it, and there is a scanned PDF floating around online). It is about the early development of rocket propellants (which as you might imagine covers a lot of really nasty chemicals), and is filled with these sort of humorous analogies and deliberate understatements. Very funny (and informative) book.
Ignition! was a complete waste of an evening or two, but quite enjoyable. It did give me an appreciation for what to expect when rocket people talk about monopropellants. And the whole thing about flourine compounds. And an appreciation for just how safe and friendly current H/lox and Kero/Lox rockets are compared to the alternatives.
For a fun tour of nasty chemicals, I can recommend "Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" by John D. Clark. You will learn about all the nice propellants that were tried back in the 50s and 60s, like FCl_3 and liquid lithium...
Prof. Poliakoff - now Dr. Martyn Poliakoff CBE - has made it, and in this video he briefly shows the specialized apparatus you use in the production of FOOF.
(I highly recommend his entire series, "Periodic Table of Videos". they are really fun)
Totally can sympathize with the title. Open a bottle of an ether with a loose cap that has had diethyl ether peroxides form on it's rim... you'll have a new outlook on the situation.
My intro inorganic-chem class had the best safety video, described as one "Dr Anxiety". Among other thing like a glass tube being into a stopper that ended with blood spraying everywhere, it had someone in a lab coat pick up a 1L reagent bottle off a shelf, eye it for a while, and say, "Hmm.. I haven't used this in a while, but I'm sure it's still good.". As soon as they turned the cap, it exploded into a giant fireball, complete with the lab guy running around on fire. Rewinding and pausing the video revealed that it was diethyl ether.
I kind of wish I could find a copy of that safety video....
That's part of it, thanks! (the instructor might have pieced together footage from a few videos. The glass tube+stopper scene is definitely the one I was remembering)
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On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I've seen the blog before; it's been mentioned on HN a few times. But so what? It's better than a lot of stuff on /newest
If you liked it, here are previous discussions over another one of his articles:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5546450 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148425