Sand Won't Save You This Time

[Glaurung]

We don't seem to get much posted about chemistry here, so I thought that, as a former chemist (at least up to degree level), I should do something about this. Fortunately, I've found someone who's already done the hard work, i.e. writing intelligently and wittily about things chemical, and all I have to do is provide the links

So, there's a chemist named Derek Lowe who publishes a blog, aptly named In The Pipeline. Chemistry as a subject is known for producing bangs and smells; the blog has an occasional series of articles under the heading of Things I Won't Work With, looking at a variety of highly explosive, smelly or otherwise noxious chemicals.

These are some of my favourite posts:
- Sand Won't Save You This Time (hence the title of this post) about chlorine trifluoride (ClF₃), which reacts so vigorously that it will burn sand. There's a follow-up post with a YouTube video showing some reactions.
- dioxygen difluoride, another extremely vigorous reactant, memorably described in the post as "Satan's kimchi".

Edit: I've updated all the links - "In The Pipeline" switched hosts. The old host stayed up for while, but is now intermittently off-line.