this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
1078 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

60052 readers
2853 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's that sort of nasty reaction. Nitration is exothermic and its ratio depends on temperature, so all you need to get it exploding is to let the ice melt.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

...I think we did it on a hotplate.

Maybe we were using toluene as a solvent or something. It's been quite a while.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You said that you only did the first nitration, right? You were probably using slightly less concentrated ingredients then. Doing it on a hotplate with oleum and fuming nitric (required for all three nitrations) is madness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah that probably makes more sense. I think we were just using bog standard sulfuric acid and nitric acid.