/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derekb.lowe@gmail.com 2013-05-08T07:02:16-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/08/things_i_wont_work_with_dimethylcadmium.php Cadmium is bad news. Lead and mercury get all the press, but cadmium is just as foul, even if far fewer people encounter it. Never in my career have I had any occasion to use any, and I like it... 76397@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2013-05-08T07:02:16-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/05/chlorine_trifluoride_some_empirical_findings.php Over the years, I've probably had more hits on my "Sand Won't Save You This Time" post than on any other single one on the site. That details the fun you can have with chloride trifluoride, and believe me, it... 76328@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Chemical News 2013-04-05T11:32:53-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/09/things_i_wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less.php When we last checked in with the Klapötke lab at Munich, it was to highlight their accomplishments in the field of nitrotetrazole oxides. Never forget, the biggest accomplishment in such work is not blowing out the lab windows. We're talking... 76125@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2013-01-09T08:32:13-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/15/things_i_wont_work_with_selenophenol.php This fine reagent was mentioned here (disparagingly) in the comments the other day, and I knew that it was time to add it to the list. I've had some other selenium entries before, and they're all here for the same... 75638@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2012-05-15T06:24:57-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane.php Let's start with the name. Quite a mouthful, isn't it? Believe me, that one's pretty chewy even for experienced organic chemists. We see lots of more complicated nomenclature, of course, but this one some features some speed bumps, that make... 75269@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2011-11-11T08:11:04-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/02/25/things_i_wont_work_with_chlorine_azide.php Well, it's been a bit too serious around here this week. So I thought today I'd step back to a period when men were men and chlorine azide was a reactive, toxic, and unstable compound that was only good for... 74880@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2011-02-25T10:29:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/15/things_i_wont_work_with_nitrotetrazole_oxides.php Tetrazole derivatives have featured several times here in "Things I Won't Work With", which might give you the impression that they're invariably explosive. Not so - most of them are perfectly reasonable things. A tetrazole-for-carboxyl switch is one of the... 74759@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2010-11-15T16:53:11-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/10/14/whoa_time_to_clean_the_fishtank_uh_root_canal_appointment_look_at_the_time.php That would be my reaction if asked to take a look at the structures in this new paper in JACS. As the authors, who tiptoe gingerly every morning into the State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology in Beijing... 74713@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2010-10-14T10:50:25-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/05/27/max_gergels_memoirs.php For once, I'm going to farm out a "Things I Won't Work With" post to someone else. For those who missed it in the comments, here's the link to the PDF of Max Gergel's extraordinary memoir "Excuse Me Sir, Would... 74496@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Chemical News 2010-05-27T06:34:12-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/05/07/things_i_wont_work_with_small_smelly_isocyanides.php Everyone's heard of cyanide, whether they've spent any time in a chemistry classroom or not. And if you form a covalent bond to the carbon of that CN group, you've got a nitrile, and those are familiar compounds to any... 74449@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2010-05-07T06:14:14-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php The latest addition to the long list of chemicals that I never hope to encounter takes us back to the wonderful world of fluorine chemistry. I'm always struck by how much work has taken place in that field, how long... 74293@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2010-02-23T08:05:03-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/23/things_i_wont_work_with_straight_dimethyl_zinc.php Organometallic reagentss come from large tribes, and there are always wild cousins up in the hills. A good place to look for the livelier ones is in the simplest alkyl derivatives, and you should go all the way down to... 74111@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2009-10-23T06:47:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/11/things_i_wont_work_with_thioacetone.php My recent entries in this category have, for the most part, been hazardous in a direct (not to say crude, or even vulgar) manner. These are compounds that explode with bizarre violence even in laughably small amounts, leaving ruined equipment... 73926@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2009-06-11T08:22:31-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/03/18/things_i_wont_work_with_chalcogen_polyazides.php The Klapötke group at Munich are some of the masters of alarming chemical structures, and they basically seem to own the field of chalcogen azides. Perhaps the competition for this class of compounds is not as intense as it might... 73790@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2009-03-18T07:28:43-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/01/07/things_i_wont_work_with_azidotetrazolate_salts.php An early favorite has appeared in my “most alarming chemical papers” file for this year. Thomas Klapoetke and Joerg Stierstorfer from Munich have published one with a simple title that might not sound unusual to people outside the field, but... 73673@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Things I Won't Work With 2009-01-07T11:24:12-05:00