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xkcd #3040: Chemical Formulas (imgs.xkcd.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Deebster to c/[email protected]

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Title text:

Can you pass the nackle?

Transcript:

[Cueball is holding a pointer and gesturing towards a whiteboard that shows the chemical formulas HCOOH and CH₃COOH. Below these, respectively, are classic diagramatic representations of formic/methanoic acid [with an apparently accidental doubled bond between the carbon and the hydroxy group] and acetic/ethanoic acid; being, in turn, a single- and double-carbon chain molecule with a double-bonded oxygen (carbonyl group) plus an oxygen-hydrogen (hydroxy) upon one carbon of each, to form the full carboxyl grouping, and hydrogens completing all other expected bonds.]
Cueball: The two simplest carboxylic acids are hakoo and chuckoo.
Off-panel voice: No!!

[Caption below the panel:]
How to annoy chemists

Source: https://xkcd.com/3040/

explainxkcd for #3040

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

HCH₂COOH sounds like a sneeze

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gesundheit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Danke!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I hear FOOF is pretty close to the noise FOOF likes to make. Well, it's more like BOOM and then screaming but I don't think that's a valid chemical formula.

Obligatory link about FOOF: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Well, it’s more like BOOM and then screaming

You have to make a whole lot of FOOF before it becomes BOOM. And it inevitably goes FOOF before you gather enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

According to that article, someone tried reacting it with just about anything he could find in the lab, and if it weren't for the fact that it's documented in a published paper, one could never be convinced that those experiments are the work of anyone other than a completely deranged scientist. The author of this article claims to have run out of expletives before finishing the second page.

Also stated in this article, and converted for your convenience, reacting FOOF with H~2~S will yield about 1.8 MJ/mol of excess thermal energy.

Most chemists, when you say "fill a reactor vessel at 700 °C with 300 torr of oxygen" and they notice a tank of fluorine gas in the room, will interrupt you and say "no you won't."

Not while I'm within a mile of this lab. Two miles if I'm downwind.
Unspecified chemist, paraphrased from the article

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Hey there choom

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ikr, I hate when people draw too many bonds to the OH in formic acid. However, that annoyance is secondary to the new contender for HAC's position as the stupidest abbreviation for acetic acid.