Extreme Contact Explosive Nitrogen Triiodide
I just synthesized the what is considered by experts to be the most unstable explosive in the world: Nitrogen Triiodide!
It's like those whipper snapper crystals wrapped in tiny tissue paper balls that you drop and they explode, only these explode if you blow on them. They're so unstable you can't even pick they up, let alone wrap them in tissue.
It was really easy too!
1. Drop some iodine crystals in some clear ammonia. The ammonia has to say "clear" on the bottle. The other stuff has soap in it.
2. Let them soak for 15 minutes. At this point they're less explosive, but they still might detonate.
3. Pour out the crystals on some paper towel to dry. The drier they are, the more unstable they get.
After an hour I barely touched the paper towel and all the crystals exploded! The explosion of 5 tiny crystals was louder than a cap gun but slightly quieter than a firecracker. I was sort of expecting it, so it was fun and not scary.
Super easy huh?
Here are some random notes about this quick project:
This is a project you only do once. Get the cheapest, smallest bottle of iodine crystals you can. You'll use a tiny amount and the rest will just sit on a shelf since this stuff is so uselessly unstable. This bottle was $20 on Amazon.
The iodine crystals are a lead grey color. They instantly start vaporizing and staining whatever they touch. Note the yellow discoloration on the white paper: they pellets were poured out and photographed in about 5 seconds, but that was long enough to stain.
If these crystals touch fabric they instantly start staining reddish-orange. I was able to quickly scrub it off with water and a remaining stain seemed to evaporate! Iodine will stain your skin for weeks like a henna tattoo. Supposedly sodium thiosulphate will help remove stains. Sodium thiosulphate is also used in anti-fungal footbaths and as an antidote for cyanide poisoning!
This is a standard red party drink cup. Note the TINY amount of crystals soaking the ammonia at the bottom of the cup. This is enough for a LOUD explosion. You'll probably make this little bit once and never make this again: it's that fantastically unstable! They instantly turn black once in contact with the ammonia.
Crystals with hand for scale. Note the yellow staining on the paper.
Here they are...waiting to explode. If you leave them alone they explode on their own. When they go off they splatter brownish-purple staining smoke everywhere: yet another reason you'll probably only play with this once.
Nitrogen Triiodide is so unstable you can set it off with alpha radiation! Just point some AM-241 radioisotope at it and it goes off. It's so unstable that it took scientists 180 years to finally get a good look at its molecular structure (1990 by Tornieporth-Oetting and Klapötke) and even then they had to synthesize it using a boron mono fluoride ultra low temperature sublimation process to produce a red version that wouldn't explode in their spectrometer!
Anyway, this was a fun after-work diversion while I spec out my new gamma spectrometry laboratory setup.
All the party cups exploded and I'm squishing myself under here until the noise stops! I'll flatten myself under the blast zone Meow.
The party cups exploded, but the plates of salmon seem stable. Yum!
