An hour in the library sometimes saves hours and days of work in the lab, but it can also save extremities. Here was used far too large of an amount
of a material which they knew very little about. In Gmelin a citation for a nickel hydrazine perchlorate, [Ni(N2H4)2(ClO4)2], pale-blue precipitate
made from standing of aq. Ni(ClO4)2 with N2H4, describes it as extremely explosive and that even in aqueous dilute suspensions it explodes. There is
also a reference (H. Ellern, D.E. Olander, J. Chem. Educ. 32 [1955] 24) which claims that the nitrate (which has been investigated as a primary),
Ni(NO3)2.3N2H4, as a moist compound occasionally deflagrates spontaneously, but that the dry salt can explode spontaneously. |