In the words of the chemistry teacher Mrs. Dutton, "Michael blew up the chemistry lab." This happened on Monday, but I've been sick and lazy, so I'll post about it today. Our second semester project of sorts in chemistry is the performance of a chemistry demo for the class, accompanied by a one-page paper explaining the chemistry concepts involved. My demo as of last Monday was the explosive decomposition of nitrogen triiodide, which is a contact explosive :).

Monday morning we practiced the demo, where we (J.D. and myself) mixed 5 grams of powdered iodine crystals with ammonia, then let it dry overnight. However, the teacher threw away over half of it because she thought we had enough. Thus the actual amount was about 2 grams. It was on filter paper, inside a plastic funnel, which rested on top of a flask. While wet, the explosive is perfectly safe, but dry it's susceptible to vibration, shock, touch, et cetera. So we planned to come in Tuesday morning, and carefully detonate it with a meterstick. Well I arrived around 7:30, and J.D. tells me that our demo has exploded. I look in the trashcan, and there is broken pieces of glass, a ripped apart plastic funnel, and part of the filter paper. Apparently it detonated while no one was around, and resulted in blowing shards of beaker glass 15 feet. I'm thinking that perhaps someone hit the outside wall or maybe just slammed a door nearby. The most amazing part is how far the beaker shattered considering the explosive was above it, and not directly inside. I had to change demos now....observe pieces of conversation over a few weeks between me and Mrs. Dutton:

Me: "For our lab demo, can we make trinitrotoluene?"
Her: "No, you can't make TNT!"
<another day>
Me: "We are going to do the combustion of hydrogen gas."
<another day>
Me: "We want to switch experiments. I had some...issues with fumes this morning with the hydrochloric acid."< br /> Her: "Well, what do you want to do?"< br /> Me: "Nitrogen triiodide"
Her: "I don't know about that."
Me: "But it makes purple smoke!"
<another day>
Me: "We'll do electroplating of a penny"

Then she told me about something much more fun, so now we've done the floating of a penny in hydrochloric acid (only 4 M, don't panic yet). We took files and filed down a tiny part of the edge of a penny until the zinc inside was exposed, then put the penny in HCl overnight. The zinc (about 95% of the penny) dissolves, but the copper doesn't, resulting in a thin copper shell that floats to the top. Oh, and in any case, Mrs. Dutton said that I'm not allowed to do anything more with explosives :).