this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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You can't burn water, because it's already burnt (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material. Water is 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. Every molecule is fully oxidized. It's also a common byproduct of fire. Therefore, you can't burn it, because it's already burnt

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Furthermore, you can burn water with a strong enough oxidizer. Oxygen, despite lending its name to the word "oxidize", is not the best oxidizer out there. That belongs to things with fluorine in it. You can burn water with pure fluorine gas to produce hydrogen fluoride and oxygen.

Don't try this at home. Both fluorine and the resulting HF is deadky.

HF is itself a super nasty piece of work -- a deadly acid that seeps through your skin and kills you from the inside.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Or Chlorine Trifluoride. That's some "no way in hell" stuff right there.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

Isn't this the stuff that the fascists tried to weaonize in WWII, but it was too dangerous to handle and it, like, burnt down a concrete bunker or something?

[–] intelati 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time

[–] Fordiman 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The fun part about that: you can burn hydrogen with fluorine because fluorine is the best oxidizer; it's then deadly (and caustic) because hydrogen is not the best reducer - it's both an oxidizer and a reducer and, as a result, it's basically middle-of-the-road for both properties. Specifically, most metals are better. So the HF will happily drop its hydrogen for many metals to oxidize (fluoridate) them instead. Lead, iron, zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and lithium will each make a way more stable fluoride than does hydrogen.

In solution (say, if you inhale HF, it'll dissolve into the moisture in your lungs), it breaks apart into H⁺ and F⁻ ions - both of which are just straight-up electrochemically promiscuous. The pair'll run through your lungs breaking up organic bonds like couples at an orgy.

Even so, HF doesn't hold a candle in terms of danger (and oxidation potential) compared to fluorine peroxide / dioxygen difluoride / FOOF.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

That looks like even more fun than chlorine trifluoride

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

There's always a lower energy state

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Flourine by itself is nothing compared to chlorine triflouride (CTF) though.

There were some ideas to use it in rockets, but, as John D. Clark put it:

It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water—with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.

There were a few successful test fires with a CTF rocket on the ground, but to avoid explosions they had go through an elaborate multiple hour long cleaning procedure, and it ended up being too expensive and dangerous.