Which Chemicals are the Most Dangerous?

[@ravencrovax]

This reminded me of my 7th grade general sciences class (24 years ago now). The first week of class, the teacher had us do the typical "drop sodium into water and watch it burn" demonstration. Except we used K instead of Na. And the teacher had us students drop the metal into water at our desks rather than just showing it to us at the head of the class. We were using about 1cm cubes, so not too dangerous. At the end of the class, the instructor took the last chunk of K (about a 5 cm cube) and said "OK, when I say 'Get down.' everyone duck behind your desks." He then proceeded to put the chunk of K into the sink and told us to get down. Then he turned on the faucet. The explosion broke the sink and scorched the ceiling for as long as the school was there. I think the only reason he did that was that we were his last class (he left at the end of the year). The best part: the instructor's actual name was Mr. Careless. No joke.

[@That_Chemist]

Oh my gosh

[@shinybreloom4027]

this man isn't part of the science department, he's a member of the based department

[@lysander3262]

This is the moment Mr. Careless became Heisenberg

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

I had a tenth grade science teacher named Harvey Burton who started every unit with an explosion. Even if it was a biology unit, lol. He just liked blowing stuff up and it always got our attention. He broke one blast shield and knocked another off the table twice in the semester. He was an awesome teacher.

[@AA-gl1dr]

@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 Harvey Based

[@cameronthomas5470]

Please upload the acetylene balloon explosion, it sounds bloody impressive.

[@penteractgaming]

It is loud af. Like... I was in a very large enclosed garage when a small balloon of acetylene and oxygen was ignited and I lost my hearing for a few minutes.

[@cybernetickiwi4315]

The trade school I went to had a policy that ballons were a banned item on campus, a few too many people over the years had filled them up with the Oxy Acetylene torches and set them off.

[@joecat916]

I did it at the junkyard with a Walmart bag and a 12 foot pole... that was irresponsible! I dont think I would want to work around that person! 🤯🙉

[@nigeldepledge3790]

Pardon?

[@wades623]

It is loud, I seen someone light a bag of it from a cutting torch before

[@ripmorld9909]

You know shits is bad when Sodium is considered E tier

[@nathantucker8409]

"should never have 10 grams of tosyl azide" me making it on 50g scale at a time

[@zatchstutorials]

We make it 15 g scale, and keep about 5 g around at a time. Based on the literature, most of the issues with TsN3 come from not synthesizing it in aqueous acetone acetone

[@xYaYYaJx]

@@zatchstutorials Thank you! I also work with Tosyl Azide and have synthesized it on multi-gram scales before. Even did some impact sensitivity tests with it - nothing ever happened. Literature is also very ambiguous when it comes to describing if or how TsN3 is dangerous, so to me it always seems like the people who're saying its SO dangerous just didnt synthesize it cleanly enough. The risk comes with residual small molecules left-over from a lot of (bad) syntheses, like low molecular esters or alcohols. They can then be azidized, and due to their low molecular weight are very unstable when that happens -> sudden decomposition, aka explosion. Curphey et. al. brilliantly investigated this in 1981

[@JakkzOfficial]

Wow

[@johgekpunkt9516]

​@@zatchstutorialsI think you need to teach me how you made Tennessineazide

[@michaelc.4321]

“100% Nitric acid give or take a percent” damn, the fabled 101% Nitric acid

[@That_Chemist]

if it contained some N2O5, maybe that would count lol

[@Darksteelflame]

Lmao, first thing i thought when i heard that as well lmao

[@peterparker1724]

@@Darksteelflamethe double lmao, nice

[@chem525]

Worst in our lab was a beaker mislabeled from a polymer manufacturer. We got benzoylperoxide (initiator) instead of the powder polymer we were to depolymerize. So, put 50 grams into a lab oven to dry the "polymer". At 105C it detonated. Oven blew apart. It's front door hit me. I waited for about 4 seconds for glass to stop bouncing off the walls before moving and looking around. The beaker had been pushed down so hard the grill it sat on looked like a cartoon impression about 4" into the grill. It was the only day in the past 3 years that we had ever opened the windows. Likely saved my ear drums but still couldn't hear for a few hours.

[@That_Chemist]

Oh my goshhhhhh

[@yourfriendlyneighbourhoodb7585]

That’s like lawsuit level behaviour

[@DrewWalton]

I suspect @AttorneyTom would like to have a word with that manufacturer.

[@DihydrogenMonoxideGuy]

Get your lawyers and get those manufacturers to court. I'd be a witness.

[@jarrydcuthbertson2739]

My supervisor told me a story about silver nitride. There was a student who generated a lot of waste (3 x 2.5L bottles) containing silver nitride. The student had a little in a beaker and threw some into there bench sink which then detonated and blew the sink up. The student then informed my supervisor of what had just happened and the amount of waste they had left over. The following events involved the bomb squad and police getting involved as well as a complete evacuation of the facility. The police wanted to arrest my supervisor but that didn't happen eventually and the bomb squad carried the glass bottles out of the building to a nearby field and detonated the bottles..... always know what waste you're making and the correct way to dispose of it.

[@That_Chemist]

Yikes

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

That's kinda terrifying

[@derkeksinator17]

Great, now that area is cantaminated with heavy metals and whatever else was in there!

[@Greeev]

It's fucking ridiculous that the police wanted to arrest the supervisor. All cats are beautiful, I suppose.

[@tetrabromobisphenol]

Ultimately it is the supervisor's fault that this student was allowed to mishandle a very dangerous waste product on an ongoing basis. Once is an accident, twice or more is a systematic lack of safety protocols.

[@joergmaass]

My dad was a ship boy after WWII and one winter, the ship's toilet froze up during a harsh Baltic winter. Nothing they did was able to defrost it. My dad decided to help by putting some carbide in a bottle together with water, sealing it and dumping it down the toilet drain. The resulting explosion broke the ice, but also the pipe and the toilet itself, spraying a week's worth of shit into the toilet room and the machine room. Needless to say that he had to clean the mess up after a healthy spanking from the officer of the watch...

[@That_Chemist]

Eww - that’s awful!

[@joergmaass]

@@That_Chemist Well, things you won't repeat for sure...🙂

[@MrAngenos]

They would spank you in the navy 🤣

[@pedrovargas2181]

Lesson learned LOL

[@HAL_9001]

Your story about the oxy/acetylene explosion reminded me of a story, and your comment about "normal people" being able to get hold of dangerous chemicals convinced me to share it. This was in the mid-90s when a 15 year old me could buy shotgun primers, black powder, fertilizer, and a particular US Army handbook from the 60s. In one summer I managed to: produce nitric acid with 2 bottles taped together, accidentally deflagrate NC in my mom's kitchen while she was at work, and nearly burn down the shed making sodium chlorate. Thank god it wasn't the 60s, or I would've been messing with carbon tet, lead azide, and mercury fulminate like they were vitamins. I made rocket-candy smoke grenades, different colored "flares", and a few remote igniters/detonators. My favorite thing to make though was explosives. I can't remember every procedure in the book, and I couldn't find reagents from all of them, but a few that come to mind are NC, NG, TNT, TACC, HMDT, DDNP, ANFO, Urea Nitrate, AN-AL (lol)... I had been making larger and larger AN-based charges. I didn't realize it yet, but I hadn't been getting full detonation. I don't know if I was using too small a primer, too small a quantity of secondary, or if it was just too impure. That was until one day when I packed a 1 liter bottle with AN-Aluminum and a 12ga shotgun shell full of (I think) DDNP. I buried just just underground out in the woods where I'd been "experimenting", hid behind a tree maybe 30-40 feet away, hit the detonator, and *BOOOOM!!!* That is the loudest sound I've ever felt. Like you said, I didn't so much hear it as hear nothing followed by ringing. But I definitely felt it. It was like getting hit with a bat inside of my skull, ribcage, and belly at the same time. I was suddenly nauseous, my head was swimming, I was short of breath. When I looked, there was a crater where I'd buried the charge, and all the underbrush was torn to shreds. I gathered my stuff, stumbled, walked then ran back home. I hid everything back it the shed (I somehow thought my mom would know it was me and come home from work), took a shower, and had a nap. While I kept messing with explosives another year or so, I kept it around the gram scale after that. Edit: I forgot to mention, I now use a fan as a white-noise generator when I sleep. It helps out a lot with the tinnitus.

[@matdyke5046]

Worked in a weld shop and we used to make acetyline balloons often lol.

[@eier5472]

Lesson of the KH story: Always know your fire extinguishers - *and practice using them!* In Europe, we also have ABC fire extinguishers, but the classes are a bit different: A is for solids (e.g. wood), B is for liquids, C is for gases, D is for metals, F is for fats. There used to be E for electrical equipment, but this class is no longer used.

[@bitTorrenter]

Don't forget you also have a number of specialist foams and powders, such as L2, M28, Monnex, AR AFFF, AR FFFP, FP & FF

[@nigeldepledge3790]

Yes, the category E was done away with because "electricity" doesn't burn. So-called electrical fires are almost always class A, but with the proviso that you mustn't use water or aqueous foam to extinguish them. CO2 and dry powder are the appropriate extinguishants for fires involving live electrical cables.

[@nicky5683]

In the US, Class C is electrical. ABC fire extinguishers can be CO2 or dry Chem. Class D is flammable metals (potassium, sodium, magnesium, etc) and Class K is for flammable liquids, specifically for large commercial kitchens. I was a fire fighter for many years, and we kept a Class K on the engine for that purpose, and for any small liquid fires, where foam wasn't really feasible.

[@SuperMuddyPuddle]

A little sad that Diazomethane didn’t make the cut. It’s one of the few chemicals that have their own special glassware.

[@WineScrounger]

they made WHAT

[@ragnarok9899]

As a regular user of tBuLi, I think it's danger is regularly overrated from the UCLA tragedy, and it's often forgotten that Sangji's tBuLi mistake was coupled with use next to an open flask of hexanes, a gigantic No-No when dealing with pyrophorric liquids, which may have been the larger contributor to her death. For me, I of course would still find it solidly high A-tier, but things that are shock sensitive or can just 'spontaneously' pop, explosives in general will always be a tier higher than tBuLi. There's some videos of people VERY UNSAFELY handling tBuLi and Diethyl Zinc, and tBuLi is only a little spooky compared to diethyl zinc :)

[@That_Chemist]

That is fair

[@etuanno]

When I worked with tBuLi in organic chemistry my assistant told me to not get spooked if the end of the needle starts to burn while transferring into another vessel with Argon in it. It didn't start to burn, but I was glad he informed me beforehand so I knew what could happen.

[@ragnarok9899]

@@etuanno Good advice. This can usually be prevented by drawing in a little bit of inert gas from the bottle's headspace into the needle before removing the needle from the bottle.

[@etuanno]

@@ragnarok9899 he told us to do that like we always did with oxygen/water sensitive substances... But still, better be mentally, prepared for the "worst" case than to be surprised by it. ;)

[@ragnarok9899]

@@etuanno True!

[@subverted]

The extinguisher types are: A - any "regular" combustibles like wood, paper, and etc B - liquid fires (grease, oil, kerosene, solvents, etc) C - electrical fires D - metal fires (magnesium, titanium, etc) K - kitchen fires like grease and oil

[@rkirke1]

D - metal fires (Glam-rock singer hairspray ignition incidents, Rammstein concert stage prop malfunctions, etc. Unsuitable for disco infernos or fires that Billy Joel didn't start)

[@stephenjacks8196]

Dry chem ABC is usually finely powdered Ammonium Phosphate, a free radical inhibitor. A fire with an active initiator, like electricity or KH, wll overcome inhibition.

[@CharlieMcKenzieSmith]

For this scenario I'm having trouble figuring out which type of extinguisher to use - my gut says type D for the borohydride and type K for the mineral oil, aka a person would never have a chance to put it out by themselves. What do you think?

[@PaulSteMarie]

@@CharlieMcKenzieSmith oil = B, borohydride = GTFOT These folks should have called 911 (or whatever internal equivalent) first, then use the proper extinguisher or other material that they should have had at the ready. If you're going to play with rattlesnakes, you should have rattlesnake antivenin on hand.

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

@@CharlieMcKenzieSmith extinguishers are often multitype

[@essie23la]

dang that's horrible what happened with that balloon, I value my hearing and have very sensitive ears...I can't believe anyone thought that was okay to do to your students!

[@MmeHyraelle]

Same, it made me angry at the person doing that, that's insensitive to say the least.

[@essie23la]

@@MmeHyraelle that's putting it softly yes! Tinnitus 7 years later...that's actual hearing damage wtf. If it was from an accidental explosion that's one thing, but nope

[@penteractgaming]

It always makes me a little nervous quenching something like Potassium with an alcohol. Also my uncle was a machinist and had an acetylene and oxygen tank. filled balloons with acetylene and it went thump but when we lit one with acetylene and oxygen in it we had the garage shut so the neighbors wouldnt be too alarmed from what we were doing so when the balloon went up, the sound reverberated and thats the story of how i lost my hearing for a while

[@That_Chemist]

potassium is scary

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@That_Chemist old dirty potassium even more so

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

@@SuperAngelofglory It may not be as reactive, but it makes up for it with the cunning of an old dog

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@andresmartinezramos7513 what, potassium? It is reactive as hell and prone to explosions.

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

@@SuperAngelofglory It was meant as in old badly kept potassium which is not as reactive as a new and well kept sample But because we don't give it the respect we should, fuck ups are more likely

[@colhammer1]

In the north of the Netherlands we use calcium carbide and water to blow up milk cans and other large vessels during new year. It's called carbid schieten. KZbin has lots of videos about it. I recommend you watch it. I always had hearing protection. The bang is ridiculous. not everyone does though.😂

[@mcb187]

Man, I’m not even into chemistry, and somehow these videos still have stories I can relate to. Anyway, there was an urban legend at my old HS that one of the welding shop classes made the stupendously bad decision to put the acetylene from a dented tank (that they couldn’t use anymore due to safety policies, how ironic) into an old weather balloon the science department had lying around. Apparently they thought they could still use it to do stuff…? I don’t know either. Well, they filled it up with the acetylene, and the balloon got big. Thankfully, they did it outside, because as you can probably guess -even filled with just acetylene, not even any oxygen- it exploded. No one seems to know how it exploded, but apparently it did. Supposedly it blew out several windows, made anyone within about 200 feet go def for a few days, and the police came because it was heard from really far, and sounded like a bomb. Supposedly people up to a mile away heard it, but I have my doubts. Now, I wasn’t there when this happened, this was long before my HS years, but I do know that the welding class building did have several windows that looked like they had been replaced, and two of the teachers that taught trade stuff had hearing problems. I looked for anything confirming that this happened, but couldn’t find any actual evedence. Either it did happen, and for some reason no one cared, or it’s just a story told to make everyone weary of misusing the welding gasses. Either way, sounds like a hell of a story.

[@penteractgaming]

Acetylene is prone to spontaneous detonation. eg. explosive trimerisation/polymerisation. Which is why it is dissolved in a solvent like acetone which is itself dispersed in a porous inert material so that this is less likely. What that dept did here is beyond stupid

[@That_Chemist]

That is bonkers

[@Yaivenov]

On the subject of gloves: surplus chemical warfare gloves can be had for about 20 bucks or less a pair and are made of butyl rubber. Much stouter against chemical attack than nitrile and economical to boot.

[@GarryDumblowski]

It always amazes me that, compared to what it does to nitrile and latex gloves, fuming nitric acid isn't that bad on your skin comparatively speaking. It's like if someone who didnt have a shield only got injured by a bullet, but someone who DID have a shield got killed by it.

[@1brytol]

Making manganese heptoxide in my home lab was one of theese things that shouldn't end well, but they indeed did end without any disaster.

[@rkirke1]

Same with me (as a chemistry-enthused teenager) somehow convincing my parents to get me a 1L bottle of 50% H2O2 as a birthday present! Best present ever! (Says me from the timeline where both my eyes and all my fingers are still in tact)

[@tomnason]

@@rkirke1 "it's just hydrogen peroxide! we already have some in the house, I just didn't want to use it all up :)"

[@bitTorrenter]

@@rkirke1 I recently got my hands on some 35% H₂O₂, advertised as Laundry Destainer. My Dad freaked 😅

[@rkirke1]

@@bitTorrenter Wow! I'd imagine 35% would be closer to "Laundry Dissolver" :D

[@1brytol]

@@rkirke1 well, it is a bleaching agent, so I guess it would work when diluted to like 15%

[@stephenjacks8196]

A notorious Pacific NW arsonist would ignite a small fire in a warehouse with LiAlH4 strewn around. As soon as firefighters opened up water hoses the "warehouse" would explode.

[@That_Chemist]

That is terrifying

[@pmathewizard]

Alternative Title: The most YOLO chemicals which are commonly found in labs.

[@Rae_N7]

Having worked with tBuLi I can tell you that it does not burn with a blue flame, but with a carmine/red flame (caused by the lithium in it).

[@robertlapointe4093]

I can confirm this. Same is true of other organo-lithium reagents (although they are less likely to spontaneously ignite).

[@schizlmanizl]

The tBuLi actually does not burn at all, but the solvent it is solved in ^^

[@ivanhoe1024]

Like your videos about dangers in lab, sometimes I feel they don’t explain very well these things to you until someone in a neighbouring lab loses one or two fingers 😂 would be very useful to have a (series of) video(s) about practical advices on how to handle properly and dispose the most common dangerous reagents, you could save more than one finger out there!

[@That_Chemist]

The best way to teach people safety is with stories - I have a video tomorrow covering more safety things

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

I'm kind of surprised that chemistry labs aren't keeping around perhaps the most basic fire extinguisher of all -- big buckets of regular sand. If I reason correctly, if you don't know what's going to put the fire out, the sand is a very reasonable guess, with the next best thing being a carbon dioxide "snow" extinguisher with its characteristic horn. This may yield enough time to cut off any gas (natural or reagent) and electric supplies safely. I'd also think of keeping around more big buckets of water (which shouldn't be allowed to be used to dispose of chemicals in, perhaps covered with a sheer material to remind of that) to begin to deal with a personal water soluble chemical contact even faster than a shower would. As careful as lab chemists may try to be, they're not working with bulletproof apparatus, deeply drilled understanding of every step entailed, or even with chemicals that are always rigorously quality tested or even identified correctly, and very typically reagents like to, well, react. It seems only a question of when, not whether, there will be a mishap, and being prepared physically and mentally when that moment comes is the most crucial thing. To relate it to another realm, it's like riding a motorcycle. There are two kinds of bikers, they say -- those who have spilled, and those who will. That's why the helmet, and some kind of spill and slide resistant clothing is a distinct plus. And having this preparation may even make bolder action to deal with the emergency more plausible, knowing that one has thought about that rodeo. Being a deer caught in headlights isn't the best thing for overall safety. This applies whether it's a home hobby lab or a university lab or a professional lab.

[@mpusztai]

So glad I came across your videos. It’s crazy how much entertainment value you can extract out of chemistry. Keep up the good work!

[@That_Chemist]

Thank you :)

[@allenhonaker4107]

All of you should get a safety class from a certified fire instructor. The discrimination of the fire extinguishers was awful. Starting with what you use it for. Fire extinguishers are there to help you escape the fire, not to try to put it out. Sound the alarm call 911 and evacuate. If you are going to use them you should practice at least once a year and get real instruction. A is water based B is CO2 C is dry chemical and they all work differently. They used to use halon on the types of fires you describe but that is no longer manufactured. I don't know what they replaced it with

[@That_Chemist]

the university that the incident happened at *now has safety training by a fire department at their station* lol

[@allenhonaker4107]

@@That_Chemist every lab should do it that way.

[@sootikins]

Halon was replaced by Halotron (mixture of dichlorotrifluoroethane and tetrafluormethane). Last I checked you can still buy it. Marketed primarily for extinguishing fires in marine engine compartments / rooms. I actually carry Halotron extinguishers in my vehicles under the belief that what's good for a boat engine fire must be good for a car engine fire.

[@YuPuWang]

Diazomethane should definitely be on the list! I've never worked with it myself but it still scares me just hearing about people talking about how dangerous it is. Like, we need a dedicated distillation kit with weird-looking smooth glass joints just to make it (diazomethane can explode even if exposed to ground glass joints), and that people have had explosions just by accidentally breaking a glass pipette tip in the diazomethane solution. And apparently it doesn't smell pungent to the point of warning us about its presence, and someone has died just by eating a hamburger next to a hood with diazomethane in active use.

[@That_Chemist]

If this is true, that is terrifying

[@lefthandedspanner]

it's very hazardous when neat, but easier to handle when diluted in ether (still very flammable though)

[@OmegaPaladin144]

Diazomethane gets points for being so toxic that it is not really carcinogenic - any significant exposure will kill you before cancer is an issue. A shame, since it is a beautiful yellow gas.

[@frtzkng]

The classes for fire extinguishers (at least in the EU) are: *A* for solids, *B* for liquids, *C* for gases, *D* for metals and *F* for fats. There used to be an E class for electrical, but nowadays all ABC extinguishers also work for electrical fires up to 1 kilovolt. On this note, *please* get an ABF fire extinguisher for your kitchen. They're usually around €30.

[@squareacid]

At an old job i did. I used to handle these 20 kg drums of PdC for a reaction we did. The room were we did the reaction held roundabout 100kg of PdC but it had a nice firesupression system

[@That_Chemist]

Yikes!!!!!

[@CharlieMcKenzieSmith]

Holy heck!! I only ever worked with less than a gram, although I did manage to paint the inside of a schlenk line with it 😬 Did you use it under inert atmosphere?

[@brianbecicka5884]

It is most dangerous upon completion of a hydrogenation when it is activated. Never allow the filter paper to dry out on your Büchner funnel and finish with a water wash of the solids.

[@squareacid]

@@CharlieMcKenzieSmith well i worked at a chemical plant that did large scale hydrogenation reactions as part of xray contrast agent production

[@chem525]

We use Pt/C regularly. Loading a reactor with 20kg tonight. Much better than Pd/C

[@queefyg490]

I will still forever use the “you think [insert scary thing] is scary? Well, you’ve clearly never met anhydrous perchloric acid”

[@mikewheeler9011]

Love the content man, love the spicy hexagons

[@That_Chemist]

Thanks!

[@PeperazziTube]

Back in my grad school days, I used to handle diethyl zinc. After dispensing it with syringe, the residue left in the needle could be pulled back into the syringe with some air and cause a miniature explosion inside the syringe barrel - very cool and pretty dangerous.

[@That_Chemist]

I haven’t had the chance to work with diethyl zinc or trimethyl aluminum - they are definitely impressive reagents!

[@erikawanner7355]

I’ve worked with perchloric acid when I was in college. Only once thou (it was just used for a reaction where my lab partner and I were determining how much nicotine was in cigarettes). The professor had to find a special fume hood and we had to vent the reaction flask tube every so often after shaking the tube. We respected it and nothing bad happened

[@wngmv]

As someone who works next to a lab, that KH story is mind blowing. OSHA is fuming there and its insane nobody thought about calling 911? While in our lab our fire alarm is set off by people making popcorns in the kitchen and the whole building had to be evacuated. 😮

[@lefthandedspanner]

the most dangerous thing I've personally handled is trimethyl aluminium, which catches fire the moment it touches air or water; it was in third year undergraduate labs, and it was the initiator for a Ziegler-Natta polymerisation reaction I didn't have a problem with it, but the next year someone else handled it carelessly and caused a fire with it ed: now I recall it, I spent much of my MChem year reacting highly flammable allene gas (1,2-propadiene) overnight in sealed flasks at 160-180°C - the mixture was thoroughly deoxygenated beforehand with freeze/pump/thaw cycles, and the gas pressure was 1/2 bar at room temperature, because a number of flasks had burst when charged with 1 bar

[@That_Chemist]

Scary!

[@danielles3841]

For fires A-ash B-Boil/barrel C- current (electric fires) D- dangerous metals K- kitchen

[@Pootycat8359]

As for fire extinguishers: A, normal flammable stuff, like wood, paper, etc. B, flammable liquids. C, fires in "live" electrical equipment. D, flammable metals. By the way, if you encounter a class D fire, and don't have the special (usually, foam) fire extinguisher available, a bucket of dry sand works really well.

[@lucyseverine9907]

As soon as you started with Sodium in B tier, I was like "*that's* getting moved down" lol

[@That_Chemist]

Haha

[@tommihommi1]

The ultra slow motion videos of NaK droplets detonating in water are super fascinating

[@jackhinkley6162]

Title should be: Which Reagents are the Most Dangerous. 5-Iodotuberciden, for example. is nasty, too. I like KH. As a young pup working on my master's thesis project, my intended target was the acetone dianion. We initially intended to generate the enolate using NaH in THF followed by a second deprotonation with n-butyllithium. This didn't work as NaH does not react with acetone fast enough to cleanly form the sodium enolate without further condensation with unreacted acetone (see HO House). We then backed up a bit by looking at the dianion of phenylacetone which was reported by Charles Hauser et al. The same problem was encountered. After 18 mos of banging the JOC paper by Charles Brown reporting the use of KH appeared and the project was done in six weeks. Using KH in THF to prepare the K enolate of phenylacetone was clean and extremely quick reaction and formation of the dianion with n-butyllithium was smoothly accomplished. We found some unexpected chemistry with this dianion which had not been previously reported and which we subsequently published. (Ancient references here. pre 1982) Suffice to say the phenylacatone dianion behaves much like the phenylallyl anion. ( Cations matter !) We did not make the acetone dianion. I looked at solvation of KH in some mixed solvents (unpublished). KH is virtually unreactive in hexane, sluggishly reacts in Et2O, and is very reactive in THF. Addition of THF to hexane or ether greatly increases the reactivity suggesting that THF solvates K+. (naked cation?) I remember 4 equivalents of THF being the sweet spot. As far as handling this reagent is concerned, the wax that KH comes in commercially does a reasonable job keeping it protected, but transfer into a well flushed flask (Ar) must be done in a dry box. Removal of the inert waxy oil can be done with a couple washings of hexane which are removed by syringe and squirted into ISOPROPANOL. A small excess of KH is needed as residual H2O in the dry THF will react.. Your stories make me thing that there were a bunch of lab idiots who were not thinking about lab safety and doing the research on nasty reagents as to what nasty things can happen with them. I always told my students to be aware of the potential hazards, to think three steps ahead, and have a plan in the event an adverse event occurred. We often worked on preparative scale (up to 1-2kg) My partial list of nasty chemicals: POCl3, PCl5, PCl5 in POCl3, CF3SO3H, AlCl3 , H2SO4 , MeLi, SOCl2 as both a reagent and solvent. jmh

[@jackhinkley6162]

I vaguely remember a comment by Brown in his paper about using a screwdriver to break up the heavy waxy mixture so that it could be weighed out. We used a heavy duty spatula but the screwdriver has class.

[@BigBoy4004]

I love this! Next time, please add Fluorine and its sweet derivatives, i.e. superacids, interhalogens, noble gas fluorides, etc.. Beautiful are also odd boranes, e.g. pentaborane or higher. Borazines, azides, azines, peroxides, peroxooxides (organic substituted ozone derivatives) all deserve their presence on this list... 🎉🎉🎉

[@skittstuff]

I almost failed chemistry in high school but it still is really cool. We did a lot of hands-on experiments including lighting our hands on fire, vacuum sealing the class clown, and this one thing (I can't remember the chemicals involved sorry lol, it's been a while) where the teacher had a beaker underneath a safety hood, and I think he put a lit match into it or something which was supposed to cause a reaction, but it wasn't touching the substance in the beaker so he reopened the hood and stuck a glass pointer in there to try and push the match down. As soon as he did that it exploded *just* as he put the hood back down. The glass thing he was using also broke and we all just stared at each other like 'I hope the other classes didn't hear that.' I have a video of this somewhere, that class was chaos. I wish I was smarter and could grasp chemistry better but for now I'll just watch this stuff lol

[@OmegaPaladin144]

NaH: In grad school, we got a safety audit from EHS and the manager asked me to fix. One finding was for chemical incompatibility. I looked at the area marked as a deficiency, which was a plastic bin with a number of reducing agents like CaH2 and NaH. Guess where it was stored - that's right, under a sink. Mind you, I had just read about how sodium hydride was so violently reactive with water that leaving it exposed to humid air can start a fire, and it was recommended that people use it in oil. Naturally, we have a rusting can of *neat* NaH. I rapidly got it placed in a different cabinet with a big WATER REACTIVE label. Perchloric Acid: Most of the problems are with metal perchlorates, which are dangerous and can be touch explosives. There are cases where it has turned benchtops explosive when hit sharply. You need specialized hoods to work with perchloric acid on anything beyond the smallest scale.

[@hoggif]

No hydrogen, surprised. When I had my first chem class in school, teacher used to demonstrate electrolysis of water. A half a liter plastic bottle will fly pretty well with a bang in that demostration. No heavy ringing of ears or any hearing issues but is was quite a demo for some teenagers. That combined with copper plating my home key in the same class. After all the years I still remember both.

[@petevenuti7355]

I did not get along with my 9th grade science teacher, so on the day of the hydrolysis demo I brought in a 2l soda bottle filled with h2 & o2 (with a steel wool electric fuse in the top 3mm of lid), a little bit of cola in the bottom to look realistic, very thin wire going across back of the class,(2 of the four from inside of a phone line) 9v battery underneath connected in series. It was a lot less conspicuous than it sounds, anyway two patches of wire was stripped 4 inches apart (to avoid unintentionally setting it off by getting bumped/stepped on) and I had some foil stuck to the bottom of my shoe. To make a long story short ,when the teacher took his smoldering toothpick to the hydrogen test tube I simply tapped my foot on the bare wire and boom a flying two liter soda bottle and I'm told the whole building heard it. I got the next day off. Maybe a week, I forget.

[@reformlabs8742]

4:29, Acetylene is very scary stuff, I wouldn't say I had trauma but I have had my fair share of scares In my country, there's this thing called a Bamboo Cannon, not sure if you've ever heard of it before. When I was a teen (around 14-16) some friends and I would gather to "Burst Bamboo" (the phrase used locally to say we're gonna use a bamboo cannon. A bamboo cannon is basically a length of bamboo about 3-4 joints long (around maybe 4ft in length) and what we'd do is take a metal rod and clear out the nodes of the bamboo, but at the bottom, the last node we leave that one. Then about 2-3 inches from the bottom node, we'd drill a 1/2" hole, which would be the touch-hole of the cannon. So you'd usually fill the bamboo with a bit of Kerosene, set it on fire, and blow it gently till it heats up the Kerosene to the point where it's very volatile.. some people added Gasoline but it's not recommended. So you're kind of blowing on the hole to sustain combustion inside the bamboo, so your lungs are kind of the supplier of oxygen. By the way, the bamboo cannon is set an angle of about 30° Once the Kerosene is hot enough to vaporize, you blow on the hot kerosene in the bamboo through the hole and the air you blow in passes over the hot-nearly boiling kerosene and fills the chamber with an air-fuel mixture till white smoke comes out the top of the bamboo and you ignite it with a stick. Bursting bamboo is very dangerous as there have been some incidents where the bamboo has split open and people got caught on fire I've heard. So usually you'd secure the bamboo with wire by wrapping it tightly with binding wire. Acetylene story: So here we can get Calcium Carbide at our local agro-stores easily. It's around $2CAD per pound. They come in huge rocks and it's super hard to break with a hammer. So silly 14-year-old me decided to use Acetylene in a bamboo cannon, I went in the back of my house and I found a really thick bamboo so I thought "There's no way this is gonna split open" Boy was I wrong. I threw in a small rock of CaC2 and added about 5mL of water. I had a candle nearby and I did not even ignite the stick yet but the flame from the candle was enough to ignite the acetylene in the bamboo, so it detonated unexpectedly. Now the bamboo hadn't split on me yet. It sounded so loud and I tried it again and on the 3rd shot, the bamboo had burst open on me violently. It had busted open so violently that if my feet were in the way, I'd definitely not have a good time. So what do I do? Try it again, this time I cut about three pieces of bamboo, very thick again and I bought binding wire and tied it tightly, the 1st one failed so I abandoned the binding wire idea as that wasn't strong enough, it busted open on the first hit. For the 2nd and 3rd ones, I bought these super-thick zip ties and I zip-tied the bamboo in many places and this seemed to work very well. The problems don't end there tho. There was an incident where my hand was over the touch hole, I covered it with a cloth so no acetylene would leak out and I had the flaming stick ready to ignite it. I remember this so vividly, the gas sorta leaked through the cloth and I saw wisps of flame and when I moved my hand away, it ignited and burnt my hand really badly through the cloth.. I stopped when my friends decided to fill a Christmas decoration with sand and put it at the top of the cannon to fire it off. It didn't go well, it split open the bamboo with a tonne of force and sent sand flying into our eyes. This is my experience with acetylene.

[@alixg7462]

Holy shit

[@That_Chemist]

Oh my gosh!!

[@edi9892]

I remember multiple NaH fires. The most spectacular one was when someone opened a Schlenk tube with no remaining label and poured water into it... It became a flame thrower and he was waving it around in a panic... PS: yes, it could have been LiAlH4 or any number of similar compounds. We just took an educated guess based on what chemicals have been used often in the lab...

[@victorlaureys4896]

Honestly, always be too precautious about those chemicals, especially if it's the first time dealing with them. As I am doing phosphorus chemistry, I manipulate very often small to medium quantities of n-BuLi. Now there was this time I was scaling up some building block synthesis where I had to dispose of 20 mL of ****** t-BuLi solution (it looked too opaque and old). This was a time where I started to know a lot of reactive and dangerous chemicals, so I took self confidence. Plus, I was used to handle n-BuLi and this time I took the t-BuLi for n-BuLi. I was honestly depressed and severely tired by the PhD and didnt pay attention and I just wanted to go back home at the moment. So I did this think that is not very okay I recognize, but that I do with n-BuLi that works. Spraying it from the syringe directly into an 10%alcohol solution in heptane at r.t. (n-BuLi is actually very okay to quench). This time, I didn't even include the heptane, just pure isopropanol. Omg, what a time with those 20 mL of t-BuLi. The alcohol I sprayed it into IMMEDIATELY catched fire fire in its entierty. Huge flame under the fumehood. Plus, I didnt mention it, but as I usually put the alcohol in huge quantity to dissiapte the heat from the quenching, this time...there was like 3L of iPrOH catching fire un front of me. So I took a moment to realize my mistake and I informed my colleague that was just manipulating two fumehoods away. We stared at the majestic fire 10 solid seconds before something new started. In what container do you think I poured those 3L of isopropanol ? That's it, a stupid plastic bucket ! So with the heat of the combustion, the top of the plastic bucket starting to melt and slowly tilting. I realized there was now a countdown until the several liters of fuel run out on my fumehood, completely on fire. This hell vision motivated me to move and my 1st reflex was to remove my lab coat, and soak it in water from the sink. Then, I just folded it and threw it on the fire source, which immediately extinguished it. Definetely the scariest chemistry moment of my PhD. I think I will tell the story to my supervisor after the defense, haha.

[@That_Chemist]

Crazy!!!

[@craigs5212]

I think it was 2018 in Auckland, a guy thought he figured out a way to fill an LPG cylinder with both the oxygen and acetylene from his welding set saving having to carry around two tanks. It didn't end well, fortunately his friend that came over for some welding didn't think it was good idea and moved away before it went off. Quite sad, he was a father of 3.

[@TheHongKonger]

I guarantee you someone will take this as the Chad chemist’s checklist

[@johndeaux8815]

I’ve got déjà vu watching this, still rewatched it for a walk though. Tosyl azide sounds like something that shouldn’t be made, scary stuff.

[@fritzi0]

tBuLi: in my experience, the commercial 1.7 M solution does not really make a good flame thrower (in fact, it's been very sluggish to ignite for me). In contrast, I had the misfortune of having to sublimate ~1 g of tBuli. Took about 20 mg out of the glovebox in a vial for curiosity reasons. If you get the chance, definitely do that, too. Doing synthetic chemistry with largish amounts of tBuLi still has me on edge, although experience helps - tomorrow, I have a synthesis involving 800 mL (not a typo, eight hundred) of tBuli solution, going to be a nice day! Acetylene: absolute b*** and should only be handled a pressures

[@That_Chemist]

Yikes!

[@fritzi0]

@@That_Chemist you could make a video on absolute madlad chemists. My prep is a scaled down literature procedure. The original scale was 3.smthing LITERS of alkyllithium. Some pictures and videos of my experiment would be available as well

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

@@fritzi0 JESUS

[@MadScientist267]

"Oxyacetylene in a styro cup" is one of the oldest shop gags there is 🤣

[@brzydka_i_bestia]

We had a lithium and sodium demo in high school, the sodium exploded sending a chunk above the safety shield straight into someone's hair, horrific

[@That_Chemist]

Yikes!

[@richardwebb5317]

Sodium is very unpredictable and I consider it far worse than potassium for water reactions. K will ignite and providing quantities are small will buzz around with that lovely coloured flame. Sodium will normally just melt and whizz around on a cushion of hydrogen. Every now and then it will explode, jump or catch fire. Sodium stored for a long time builds up surface peroxides/superoxides and you never know which way they will jump. A shield above the trough is a very good idea - cuts down the hydroxide fumes too.

[@sabliath9148]

Ah, so that's why the loads of Acetylene in Derail Valley require the tier 3 Hazmat permit.

[@stephenjacks8196]

Common Lab accident: letting "used" Hydrogenation catalyst "dry out" like on filter paper. (Raney Nickel, Pd on C, et al)

[@That_Chemist]

Yes - for sure

[@bobbyc2768]

4:06 when working with fuming nitric acid butyl rubber gloves are what you want, vinyl won't catch fire but it will destroy the glove and go right through it

[@rykehuss3435]

"Only common chemicals" 2:38 "It belongs in S tier just for how obscure it is"

[@jmowreader9555]

Fire extinguisher classes: A: ordinary flammable solids B: flammable liquids C: electrical fires. Class C agents don’t conduct electricity D: flammable metals. K: kitchen grease fires

[@Xeraghusta]

The US fire classifications: Class A; paper or wood fire Class B; flammable liquid or gases fire Class C: electrical fire Class D: metal fire

[@Yaivenov]

Wish you'd do a list of rocketry propellant. Not sure how to rank them, perhaps in quanta of nopeness? Could make a list of a few dozen ranging from innocuous like 75% ethanol and LOx to truly horrifying like chlorine trifluoride and dimethyl mercury.

[@petevenuti7355]

Everything from Zinc/Sulphur in an old CO2 cartridge to riding the waves of repeating nuclear blasts....

[@Yaivenov]

@@petevenuti7355 mmm Project Orion...

[@GoogleAccount-if6pu]

Honestly, we could put anything with a positive enthalpy of formation on the list.

[@brianjones9780]

13:46 I found this part hilarious. That's a wacky ass thing for a chemical to do. Having three oxygens zoom away in a triplet just from heating a chemical was unheard of to me.

[@nenben8759]

Putting out smoldering fires with anhydrous ethanol What a god

[@aqdrobert]

Egon: Around potassium, never cross the proton beams.

[@cpt_nordbart]

Acetylene is the typical Blue Collar bomb material. Since many jobs have a Acetylene torch at hand for all kinds of metal work. Many pranks have been done with it, I'm sure.

[@That_Chemist]

many people do pranks - dangerous ones

[@AnimeShinigami13]

There's a scientist in Mass Effect who likes to sing, and he wrote a "Battle Hymn of the Protiens" in Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC. I would LOVE to see both your reaction to that song, in a "That chemist reacts" video and I would love to hear you actually perform that song. Every post I see if that song, there's at least one student thanking the writers of Mass Effect for helping them ace their biochem or biology tests.

[@joshp6061]

5:20 “Like a flash-bang if you’ve ever played call of duty” As if flash-bangs don’t exist irl lmao

[@That_Chemist]

Yeah but what’s more likely, being flash banged in COD or IRL?

[@joshp6061]

@@That_Chemist lol depends on your line of work

[@agonaxe]

Acetylene is crazy dangerous S rank for sure, used it for welding and cutting during my industrial training. We worked with bottles of about 40L, containing 8kg of acetylene,on a tilting wheelbase for mobility, now i'm not sure how true this is, if it was dated information or if they just wanted us to be super safe, but the safety responsible instructed us that 1. the gas was explosive in low enough volumes that the air was still breathable and more or less unnoticeable for human senses, and 2. that bottles could auto ignite if the where laying down. In the case of a fallen bottle we had to touch it to asses if heat was building inside and stand it up immediately, if heat was building up then we had to evacuate the building and the general area and call firefighters who would cool and dump the bottle in a nearby lake for about 3 months or until explosion. Side note the first Acetylene bottles were pressure bottles that kept the gas in liquid state using only pressure, which due to imperfections in production ledd to some bottles auto exploding if sufficiently disturbed or impacted due to gas forming in the top part of the bottle. With a common transport of the era being horse cart on a dirt or cobblestone road, with several bottles per cart. Some transports simply vanished completely, with no remnants except a large scorch mark.

[@ephremcortvrint2376]

13:50 when you started the video I thought to myself ‘anything with that many oxygen molecules has to be fucking dangerous’

[@Aikano9]

In one of our first chemistry classes in school, we were doing some experiment, it didn’t work like the teacher told us it would. So naturally I like any other child would, started deviating from the procedure we were given, and tried many different things to get the small pop I was promised, after some unsuccessful attempts, I ended up holding a lit match to a tube connected to a glass thing. BOOOM!!!, glass shards everywhere and ringing ears. idk what was in that glass but it sure as hell was loud and explosive.

[@WooShell]

I'm kinda missing HNIW / CL-20 / Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane in your tier videos.. it's both a very nice looking "spiky heptahedron" structure and yet a very violent molecule that really wants to disperse into a lot of smaller compounds whenever someone sneezes in the next room.

[@That_Chemist]

it is in my collaboration tierlist with Tom!

[@dreamyrhodes]

Acetylene in S tier? We used to create this with calcium carbide and water, and it was a common chemical used in welding also for lights for mine workers and even bikes in carbide lamps. We also filled balloons with it and let them explode with a small fuse attached to it. It's not worse than H2 or something similar.

[@science_and_anonymous]

That potassium paper came out that long ago...I feel so old now

[@lefthandedspanner]

also, 35% hydrogen peroxide is about the most concentrated form that can be safely shipped in bulk; provided you store it correctly, it's perfectly well behaved at my last workplace we had about 6 tons of it in metal IBCs, stored in the coldest part of the warehouse, where the temperature barely climbed into double digits even in summer

[@SuperAngelofglory]

lol I would definitely try throwing some MnO2 into one of those IBCs just for fun

[@cctakedown333]

I regularly "handle" a couple of tonnes of 50% hydrogen peroxide. As in daily. Given me "handling" it is pretty much limited to "move it from truck to storage" but I've heard a couple of stories of people knocking the damn pallet over or piercing the container with a forklift.

[@apokalypthoapokalypsys9573]

>temperature barely climbed into double digits Celsius or Fahrenheit?

[@theEVILone0130]

Benzoyl peroxide if I recall correctly when I was younger that was in a anti acne facial scrub. Or at least that is what came to mind when I heard you say it at the end.

[@tactiti0n]

Now there's a title to make the YT algorithm blink its gigantic, flaming eye lol

[@arkbien9303]

K extinguishers are used to quench metal fires.

[@bushhawk5460]

8:51 meanwhile, Tom just bubbles ozone through the stuff

[@CED99]

Wasn't it Thunderfoot that wrote a paper on columbic explosions of alkaline metals (I think he may have been using NaK) a couple of years ago?

[@That_Chemist]

Correct!

[@cn8229]

Someone should've warned E&F about hydrogen peroxide before he concentrated it up to 102%

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

I think that and the liquid ozone video are the only times I've ever seen Tom acting worried. Which is saying something, because he's made some REALLY sensitive primaries like organic peroxides.

[@cn8229]

@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 Yeah, that ozone video was crazy. I'd probably be terrified if I had enough ozone that you could actually tell what color it is.

[@INDYANDY4C]

A question about Amonium Tri-Iodide. My chemistry teacher painted the floor at the door to the class. It seemed funny to watch people jumping around walking on it. How much is dangerous to shock? Or, too much to be around? 1 beaker 2?

[@eddievanhorn5497]

That paper about coulombic explosions was actually coauthored by thunderf00t here on KZbin. He actually has some super interesting videos about it and you can even see videos and bloopers from when they were doing their research in the lab.

[@That_Chemist]

No way! That’s crazy!

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

I haven't heard that name in years Will go and check out ehat he is doing nowadays

[@pierreplourde]

Calcium Carbide: hit it with water and it produces acetylene exothermically.

[@SuperAngelofglory]

I did the O2/C2H2 baloon burning too, but on the outdoors, and I was about 10 meters away when it detonated. Still made my ears ring for a while. Also, where would you put H2S2O7?

[@That_Chemist]

Pyrosulfuric acid is terrifying - probably S-tier (it can protonate sulfuric acid!)

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@That_Chemist I think I mentioned a story when in the highschool I studied myself, some 50 years ago, an accident led to a large spill of it and a few droplets caused permanent damage to a student's face. Even now, that story is still remembered in that highschool.

[@stephenjacks8196]

HSO3F - "SO3 dissolved in HF" YT vids of H6SbF6 in HSO3F. "Protonates Methane".

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@stephenjacks8196 not that common in the lab (compared to H2S2O7)

[@voltaris3008]

You know, as someone who's aspiring to be a chemist as my career, this video helps me know what I should be *really* careful with

[@EliMarszalek]

Watches video: proceeds to order all of them

[@That_Chemist]

Nooooooo

[@snakebite1033]

Not so fun fact about perchloric acid. During the very first two lab courses as an undergrad we had small 20 ml bottles of reagents for each student at their bench top for old school tests for elements/ions etc. These bottles did have a flimsy tiny cap and were prone to leaking. I habe never managed to use the hydrogen peroxide one without getting burnt. Anyways we weren't told much apart from the basic warning labels. Anyways among these was a bottle of 70% perchloric acid. Luckily the common tests usually don't for it, but I used it for a more unusual test for arsenic in the second lab course. Probably would have not done that if I had known its dangers, and would rather have blown up another marsh test setup.

[@raideurng2508]

"If you put it (sodium) with halogenated solvents, you can get explosions.." Off in the distance some aussie is mixing it with carbon tetrachloride and wacking it with sledgehammers.....

[@hammerth1421]

Sodium can do a Coulomb explosion as well, it just isn't almost instant and guaranteed like it is with potassium.

[@That_Chemist]

I’ve quenched lots of sodium, and it can still be sketchy, but the potassium ones are *way* spookier

[@hammerth1421]

@@That_Chemist Definitely. There's a reason schools in Germany aren't even allowed to own potassium metal anymore.

[@adamrak7560]

@@hammerth1421 I heard about a story when a teacher doing an alkaline metal in water demonstration used half a fist sized potassium metal (the entire stock). It broke the table, but the problem was the hot burning potassium droplets going everywhere.... edit: I am not sure how authentic the story was, similar stuff must have happened many times.

[@PaulSteMarie]

Acetylene probably belongs in A tier. It's a very common fuel gas, although it requires special cylinders and will explode at about 15 psi, with no oxygen source or spark required. Class C extinguishers are for electrical. Class D is for flammable metals. Benzoyl peroxide is also acne medication. There's any number of ointments that contain it for unleashing free radicals on your pimples.

[@That_Chemist]

it also starts with an a

[@douro20]

Diazidomethane. It's formed when a metal azide reacts with DCM. In 2008 an explosion occurred in a kilo lab (a lab which synthesizes chemicals in kilogram amounts for research) caused by diazidomethane which accumulated in the condenser of a 20L rotary evaporator.

[@visiblur]

Acetylene is horrible. We had an entire days worth of training on it back when I was in the rescue specialist force during conscription. It's the number one cause of firefighter deaths worldwide, up there with backdrafts

[@That_Chemist]

Insane

[@glitchxero4687]

Benzoyl peroxide is also the active ingredient in many pimple creams and treatments. Wouldn't have expected to see that up at A tier. 😅

[@MarkRLeach]

Raney nickel. In the next lab a student was filtering off Raney nickel in methanol, and let the Raney nickel get dry. There was a spark and the student was so surprised she knocked over the conical flask of methanol and set the bench (and herself) on fire. I heard screams, grabbed a CO2 extinguisher and put the fire out. Phew! It immediately caught on fire again. Repeat. And repeat. A foam extinguisher did the trick.

[@That_Chemist]

Glad to hear you got it before it created a big problem!

[@lloydevans2900]

I remember at the university chemistry safety lecture in my first year of undergrad, they did an acetylene/oxygen balloon explosion to show us just how energetic oxy-fuel mixtures could be. The lecturers all wore ear muffs and handed out more of these for anyone sitting in the first two rows of chairs in the lecture theatre. For everyone else, they told us to cover our ears tightly with our hands, and made sure everyone complied before they ignited it - with a match on the end of a very long pole. Even with my hands over my ears, it was still one of the loudest explosions I have ever heard, and one of the not so nice side effects was broken glass raining down from the ceiling, from the shock wave breaking light bulbs! Anyway, when it came to destroying pyrophoric stuff like alkali metals, NaH, KH, lithium aluminium hydride, that sort of thing: The prescribed procedure was usually to cover it with a large volume of relatively inert solvent (like toluene or xylene), then slowly add a mixture of toluene with 10% t-butanol, or some big hindered phenol like BHT. The theory being that it would slowly react to form the butoxide or phenoxide, which were far less dangerous. I however didn't like this idea much, on the grounds that if something went wrong and it did ignite, you would have a lot of flammable solvent on fire, in addition to the pyrophoric material. Not a great situation to be in, as described in this video. My preferred procedure was to take the pyrophoric stuff outside to a quiet end of the car park or yard, dump it into an old metal dustbin and spray some water in from a distance with a fire hose or water pistol. It would usually produce some sparks and flames, but these didn't last for more than a few seconds and there was nothing else around to catch on fire anyway. One of the most impressive episodes of this was when we found some really old jars of manky lithium aluminium hydride which nobody wanted. I put a few gallons of water into the dustbin, took the lids off the jars and tossed them in. A few seconds later there were some muffled explosions and it looked like I had ignited a roman candle firework in the bin - sparks and flames flying up into the air. Pretty spectacular, but again nothing damaged and nobody hurt. Better to do that kind of thing outdoors than to risk burning the lab down.

[@That_Chemist]

Yikes!!

[@Kualinar]

Benzoil peroxide is found in some eczema unguents. It's concentration in those unguents is about 0.1%...

[@tcss0612]

LOL i used Manganese heptoxide in my hight school science-fair project. We use Potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid to ignite some candle .

[@tcss0612]

i am not sure if we really make Manganese heptoxide. i only knows that if we add Potassium permanganate sulfuric acid and paper together it will catch on fire.

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

@@tcss0612 probably made very small amounts of it.

[@peterjf7723]

I didn't know that the Tollens test could form an explosive. We used the Tollens test in O level chemistry in 1976.

[@rkirke1]

I knew it'd be a good story right after "Because water floats on hexane.." Hearing about the fire extinguishers made me curious as a physiol/pharma grad.. Are there particular workups where using the wrong extinguisher would actually be disastrous from a toxicology perspective? (Not the obvious "Water extinguisher at a bucket full of burning ether" type energetic risks, but the extinguishing agent itself contributing to some hideously toxic reaction product). I can't think of anything overly toxic from KH vs ammonium bicarbonate or CO2, but expanding the scope to any common lab chemistry & extinguisher type (including historical ones like carbon tet, BCF and other halogenated organics)..? Chemists: hit me with your worst case hypothetical scenario for "Used wrong extinguisher and poisoned everyone; original fire would have been far preferable"...

[@torydavis10]

Yeah I'm sure there's got to be countless ways you could generate chlorine or even bromine. One thing I do know would definitely not be an improvement (though not toxic at all) would be CO2 on a magnesium fire. Hope you get some good answers!

[@That_Chemist]

like maybe if you tried putting out a magnesium fire with a CO2 fire extinguisher?

[@rkirke1]

​@@That_Chemist Yeah, metal fires are no joke! A friend who was in the defense force once told me about some of their fire training. Because many of the aircraft had fairly large parts made from high-magnesium alloy in the landing gears, dealing with big metal fires were touched on. Apparently the protocol for dealing with a magnesium fire on the runway was: 1) Put a ring of sand bags around the plane 2) Wait

[@rkirke1]

TIL carbon tetrachloride fire extinguishers were even worse than they sound. Not just because you were spraying CCl4 everywhere while on fire, but because it would occasionally form lethal amounts of phosgene.. Yikes.