Things I won't work with

I found this series of hilarious chemistry blog posts by a chemist called Derek Lowe. His series is titled "Things I won't work with" and it covers compounds that are too hideously stinky or volatile to consider sharing a lab with - everything from "simple little things like, say, fluorine azide and going up to all kinds of ridiculous, gibbering, nitrogen-stuffed detonation bait." It's worth a read, even if you don't understand chemistry because he is a brilliant writer. Highlights include:

- "Hexanitro? Say what? I'd call for all the chemists who've ever worked with a hexanitro compound to raise their hands, but that might be assuming too much about the limb-to-chemist ratio."

- “You can isolate [titanium tetraazide], it seems, as long as you handle it properly. It turns out that brutal treatments like, say, touching it with a spatula, or cooling down a vial of it in liquid nitrogen - you know, rough handling - make it detonate violently. I think that staring hard at it is OK, though.”

- “The safety literature is just full of alarming stories about old lab benches that had had perchlorates soaked into them years before and exploded when someone banged on them. They're a common component of solid rocket fuels and fireworks, as you'd figure.”

- “This, folks, is the bracingly direct route to preparing dioxygen difluoride, often referred to in the literature by its evocative formula of FOOF … FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; you'll never get close to [room temperature] with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces.”
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/