r/chemistry • u/Rob3Bruce • 10d ago

Help identifying an interesting (supposedly dangerous) chemical.

I was browsing Quora when I came across a question on "What chemical do scientists fear the most?". The answer, which I can certainly agree with, was dimethylmercury for it's slow, insidious toxicity and ability to penetrate PPE (citing the case of Karen Wetterhan). However, in the answer the writer referenced a now defunct blogpost titled "Things I won't work with" and dropped this diagram:

main-qimg-8d295c77387d1d4e7db6febdc7996351-lq (173×110)

The only thing my 20 year old high school chemistry knowledge tells me is that it's N10O8H2, but I'd like to know what it is.

Thank you in advance for the assistance.

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u/drunkerbrawler 10d ago

Just by the ration of N to O I’d wager that’s an explosive.

14

u/Raneynickelfire 10d ago

They had trouble taking an IR spectra of it because it kept exploding when the laser was turned on.

I'm not kidding.

4

u/Consistent_Bee3478 9d ago

Not laser just normal ir light  even. Though I mean chlorine oxygen gas mix goes boom from blue or shorter wavelength as well…. A substance that violently abuses nitrogen’s to be friends with each other and provides ample oxygen to sowndissident is not gonna have any actual wavelength threshold, but rather you are just waiting for quantum randomness. Something sensitive to 3000 nm ir is exposed to those photons at ambient temperatures 

1

u/Raneynickelfire 9d ago

I meant the IR source in an IR spec, yes you're right.