and then there's FOOF

https://web.archive.org/web/20150825171826/http://pipeline.c...

(Webarchive since original seems down)

Original has moved to a new host:

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...

Bummer, more ads, more whitespace, larger text, and harder to navigate. :(

Probably just as well, that blog usually costs me several hours of work.

"If the paper weren’t laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you’d swear it was the work of a violent lunatic."

I've seen this article before, but I will never get tired of reading it again.

His article on chlorine trifluoride was an absolute classic as well, and some of his articles make me very glad I don't live anywhere near Dr. Klapötke's lab.

The FOOF article pointed out one other nasty problem, namely, how easy it is to game search systems:

"But I do note that if you run the structure through SciFinder, it comes out with a most unexpected icon that indicates a commercial supplier. That would be the Hangzhou Sage Chemical Company. They offer it in 100g, 500g, and 1 kilo amounts, which is interesting, because I don’t think a kilo of dioxygen difluoride has ever existed. Someone should call them on this – ask for the free shipping, and if they object, tell them Amazon offers it on this item. Serves ’em right. Morons."

Given how often I come across spammy search results in Google, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

Yeah, the (usually Chinese) spammy chemical suppliers have an interesting selection. I've seen several offering to sell you 99% pure isopropane, which is a bit like offering a RESTful service that keeps track of state on the server.

Somebody really needs to place an order for some of this stuff and see what happens.

Given that a number of tests listed beforehand are with compounds that have their own "won't work with" articles, yeah one do wonder about the sanity of the chemist behind the paper.

> very glad I don't live anywhere near Dr. Klapötke's lab.

I do. If I ever hear a huge explosion followed by a smoke column north of the city center, I know what my first suspicion will be.

Dr. Lowe moved.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...

Holy shit! Even the concept of how it's produced is nuts. The extra links are even better, including the better-than-oxygen oxidizer that burns sand. The whole collection of anything involving flourine is like "let's see just how many people we can kill and things we can destroy without actually doing it." Whole blog is great along with high quality comments.

Thanks for the link and thanks to others for updated links! I'm in process of spamming all kinds of people with them haha. Hmm: need to get a hold of some FOOF that will go poof next 4th of July. :)

Yeah, the chlorine trifluoride is most often the gateway to those articles.

Ended up reading a PDF version of the book, Ignition!, mentioned in that article.

I do wonder if dry wit comes with the profession, btw.

Don't know but I like his style.