I don't know if there is ANY "good first synthesis" if you're completely new to it and on your own. But nitrogen triiodide certainly is NOT a good
first lab.
I swiped a few grams of Iodine from the high school chemistry lab at age 16. Did the obvious thing with it, of course.
Performed the reaction with my mom's "clear ammonia" between getting home from school and going off to my part time job at a local restaurant. The
batch was left drying on the filter paper, sitting on my desk- In my bedroom. Indoors. About 5' from my bed. With all my prized lab glass sitting next
to it.
Bad planning, that.
When I got home, my lab glass was in tiny pieces all over the room. A LOT of it was in my bed... My dad was waiting up for me, drinking a beer and
when he talked to me he was rather surprisingly calm and non-judgemental... All he said was: Don't make anything explosive in the house. Don't bring
anything explosive you MAKE into the house. Good night.
The next day, my younger brother who had the bedroom next to mine told me that he had been horsing around with a friend, and banged into the wall
separating our rooms. There was a large explosion on my side of the wall... He opened the door of his room just in time to see my father finish his
sprint to my bedroom door. Dad opened the door and looked inside at the cloud of purple iodine vapor hanging over the ruins of my desk and said to
himself out loud: "Oh. He knows how to make that now?"
Dad then closed my door and went back to the kitchen table, cracked a beer and continued sketching electronics circuits for his next day's work. Don't
know how many more he downed before I got home that night-
It took me hours to clean up all that broken glass. If it had not gone off until I had come home and entered the room, I'd have probably suffered
injuries from flying glass, possibly hearing damage and maybe lost an eye or eyes. I was as lucky as such a fool can be.
At Dad's funeral, his older brother told me the story about Dad getting arrested at age 13 for a fireworks experiment that broke a neighbor's window
back before WWII. Guess it runs in the family.
[Edited on 8-4-2014 by Bert] |
