Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.
This stuff would go off immediately if you touched it.
I used to make it with my friends with household ammonia and medical iodine. We mixed them and then filtered through paper. Then this brown powder would explode after it dried if we touched it just lightly.
It's crazy that something so unstable can even exist at RTP. Like it's interesting how it threads the line between so-unstable-you-can't-make-me, and stable-enough-to-make-but-decompose-under-a-stern-glance. Universe has a sense of fun, NI3 is tuned specifically for existence as a prank substance.
I'm not a chemist, but the article talks about it being prepared in a solution of ammonium hydroxide which can be poured on a floor and left to dry. Surely this is what the GP is comparing their memory to, and not a bucket of pure nitrogen trioxide.
A fun thing to make. I made this in the high school chemistry room after school. Filter paper with some iodine crystals, pour some ammonia over and wait for it to dry (as I recall). I am not sure where I learned about it. Often my dad, who was a chemist then, would tell me little tricks like this. (He also turn me on to slathering a small amount of potassium permanganate with glycerin.)
Anyway, I was walking with it after I made it (when it was still damp and in the filter paper) and I accidentally dropped the filter paper in the school hallway. I picked up what I could (I suppose I should have gone back and mopped it up).
It was fun, the small explosions, like tap shoes clacking, when it was dry and walked upon. (Too bad it left brown stains on the linoleum.)
I was fortunate to have not had a large quantity dry. It can be pretty dangerous in large amounts I am told.
My A-level chemistry teacher liked to paint it onto door frames and in the hallways. Apparently one day he'd left some out in his lab in preparation for this prank, then the school had a surprise inspection. He had to teach his class in front of the inspectors while being constantly interrupted by small purple explosions.
He also liked to let off expired fire extinguishers at his sixth formers out of his window, and he once attempted to use them to propel a pupil sitting on a wheely office chair. Very memorable teacher!
I've always heard that the incredibly sensitive volatility of this compound precludes the ability to even amass it in large quantities, because it will essentially fulminate under its own weight.
It's a great shame John Walker is no longer with us, he was a bright fellow (even though I thought his company's products were too expensive). I loved his Hacker's Diet book, a true techie's approach to dieting. Certainly worth a read if one's interested in such things.
No doubt those of us who've gravitated to this link like watching things that go bang so make sure you read Walker's link at the bottom of the Nitrogen Triiodide page to his article on FOOF—aka Dioxygen Difluoride (O2F2). Also, make sure you read the link in that page to Derek Lowe's blog in Science's site Things I Won't Work With.
Every chemist should read Lowe's blogs, they're not only informative but often entertaining. I've copied the FOOF link here for convenience (this truly is chemistry at the bleeding edge):
This was a favourite for me at school. Had a great chemistry teacher. Always had something that blew up available.
This was motivational until I did A level chemistry a few years later. He vetoed my attempts to make RDX out of hexamine tablets and normal nitric acid. He got suspicious when I was trying to dehydrate nitric acid with sulphuric acid.
Good job I gave up on chem or I’d probably be dead or in prison.
We used to steal Iodine crystals from the chem lab at High School, and set "traps" for the unwary. I have no idea how many clothes we ruined by putting NI3 on seats.
We also wired cans in || and wired up the boys' urinal so that they could "complete the circuit".
Ah, the Good Old Days before Workplace Health and Safety, or MDS.
Since Librivox is on the front page, here's a 1910 book reading, pretty good quality, of "The Romance of Modern Chemistry" which covers NI3 (Ch 15) and many similar topics. Surprising how much chemical knowledge existed then, even without a solid understanding of QM:
An interesting feature is that if you go up the periodic table on the iodine column, the species become less reactive, with nitrogen bromide being explosive but more stable than NI3 and the fluorine derivative, NF3 being stable enough to use in industrial semiconductor applications (etching), and with the benefit of not being a persistent environmental pollutant due to relatively rapid breakdown.
NF3 is very different than the other nitrogen halides and used as a silicon etchant, but re: environmental concerns, perhaps you're confusing it with something else? It's an extremely potent greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenhous...) Surprisingly less toxic than some other gases used in the semiconductor industry though!
Science Madness forums may be an okay place to find better references than I'd know about. If you just want to see some fun chemistry and not necessarily take it that seriously or learn to do it yourself, there's some good people on youtube. Some of my favorites are Extractions&Ire (and his sister channel), NileRed and Stryopyro. Some people in some of those communities can probably point you in the right direction for whatever you're looking for.
I went to a high school with an specialization in Chemistry in Argentina. We made a lot of Chemistry experiments, like 16 hours per week.
One day the other half of my class was at the lab. They were boiling some organic compound with potassium permanganate and probably sulfuric acid. The idea is that you have them in a flask, and a long refrigerated vertical tube to condense the vapors and send the liquid inside the flask again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflux#Reflux_in_chemical_reac...
They forgot to add some porcelain scrap to the flask, that is useful to get an even boiling instead of big bubbles. So they added them while it was already boiling!
It boiled too fast and create a jet of hot mix that reached the ceiling that was like 3 meters (18 foots) high. Lucky nobody got hurt, but as a reminder we had a brown mark in the ceiling for a few years.
Many experiments need supervision from someone that knows what they are doing.
Doing it is significantly different than asking for a repository of similar projects. Arguably this kind of gate keeping is specifically what I'm trying to step around.
This does bring back fun memories! My favorite application was to make the game of ping pong a little more random. Small amounts scattered across the table would result in puffs of purple smoke and the ball changing direction.
I made this for my high school chemistry project. We made it in the morning so it would be ready for our afternoon class.
It was drying in the chemistry back office and there must have been a draft. It exploded during a silent study hall.
Somehow they let us remake it for class that afternoon. We tried to put it on the floor as a joke, but our teacher was wearing sandals that day (no lab). She wasn't happy about it.
I originally got the idea (and prank idea) the previous year from a retiring chemistry teacher.
lol - great story. So many good stories here about this stuff.
I agree with others who say it's dangerous, but only if you use sufficient quantities, or contained (don't contain!). A few crystals sprinkled in different places will just produce the pops and not hurt anything - I think! :)
From memory: size of a full stop or white sesame seed will already produce a very (but not painfully) loud bang; whereas a speck so tiny on the ground you can't readily see it from standing height is sufficient for a "walking over" prank, surprisingly loud for how tiny it is.
The ultrafast snappy pop and purple smoke is satisfying, but it does stain.
I like the comment about ping pong - hilarious use case.
The Anarchist Cookbook had a recipe for this IIRC, called ANTI (Ammonia Nitrate TriIodide). My chemistry teacher was not pleased at the pits left in the classroom countertops.
Kids - do note that the Anarchist's Cookbook is absolutely verboten in the UK at least. My old man was an ATO so I didn't need a copy.
The original AC will be several elements in every wordlist that every intelligence service ever has. It is probably quite close to EICAR in that world.
> It is probably quite close to EICAR in that world.
I recall reading some story where the author was able to do a denial of service attack on a system by putting EICAR in it, causing a kind of autoimmune dysfunction.
If you skip forward to 16m 33s you'll be treated to a lively streak of invective from the passenger of a car whose driver has just confirmed that feeding EICAR to a parking system prevents it from letting any vehicle past the barrier.
I made this in high school, shortly after my AP Chemistry exam in 1992. I left it out to dry under the fume hood, and my teacher, not knowing what it was, moved it and BOOM! Fun times.
I almost got banned from high school chemistry for making this (UK 1970's). Made it during break in middle of Chemistry lab while the teacher was out, and sadly was rather sloppy - got it over the floor, threw damp filter paper covered in it into the waste paper basket (which later self-detonated), etc.
If you like crazy chemistry stories, be sure to read "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?".
One of the first stories in it involve the high school chemistry club breaking into the local college to get materials for some experiments. Along the way they find metallic sodium in kerosene and take some by shoving it in someone's back pocket. After some time passes it predictably catches fire. But don't worry: they have water handy!
> There is no risk of terrorists using NI3 because anybody who made it in sufficient quantities to do serious damage would succeed only in blowing themselves up: those who do so are humorous, not terrible.
...not gonna say more, but, buried in the info and video there IS actually an idea for overcoming this nasty limitation (if you can mostly live up with "quasi-random detonation time", which could be acceptable for _some_ nefarious uses). Tbh I'd be more curious if any current gen LLM can figure it out.
Even if you were okay with all of that, there's still better compounds to use as weapons. It's just not a good one at _all_.
It _is_ still dangerous though. A lot of people/writeups discount the danger. You really want to use ear/eye protection, do it outside, and try to avoid glass for the final steps to reduce the shrapnel risk.
And it's probably obvious, but: it's not a good prank. You can really fuck up someone's ears or worse.
My dad talks about making this stuff as a teen. It started with a chemistry kit that came with all sorts of dangerous things they would never in a million years sell targeting to a kid again.
This peaked his interest in chemistry and he came across nitrogen triiodide while researching at a library with actual paper books lol.
The ingredients were of no difficulty to obtain back then.
They made this stuff and had fun setting some of it off. But he then told me that the next day he and his buddy thought let’s go set off some more. But he thought about it and they both said but what if the stuff on the edge of the jar has dried? Yes they made a fairly big sample. They were too nervous to open it so he told me he dug a hole and carefully moved it and hurried it.
It sucks that people do bad things with chemicals as I would love to play around with things like this carefully in a safe setting without risk of other being hurt.
Oh wow! Growing up my chemical engineer uncle would come out on the Fourth of July and dump a bucket of stuff on the road in front of his house. A while later when it was dried he'd have us roller blade and skate board down the road to setup all the little explosions. It was a total blast. He refused to tell anyone what the compound was, but assured us it could be easily made. It has to be this stuff.
You would know if it was NI3 - it creates a deep purple cloud of sublimated iodine when it detonates and it stains everything around.
This was nearly 30 years ago, so honestly i don't remember much beyond the fun of hearing things explode under the wheels of my rollerblades
This stuff would go off immediately if you touched it.
I used to make it with my friends with household ammonia and medical iodine. We mixed them and then filtered through paper. Then this brown powder would explode after it dried if we touched it just lightly.
It's crazy that something so unstable can even exist at RTP. Like it's interesting how it threads the line between so-unstable-you-can't-make-me, and stable-enough-to-make-but-decompose-under-a-stern-glance. Universe has a sense of fun, NI3 is tuned specifically for existence as a prank substance.
> Universe has a sense of fun, NI3 is tuned specifically for existence as a prank substance.
It does feel that way! Another plus for the substance is just releases iodine, not something poisonous like lead for instance.
Yes! And looks good doing it. Essential nutrient at that, tho you probably shouldn’t just eat it.
Do you remember purple smoke?
This was nearly 30 years ago, so honestly i don't remember much beyond the fun of hearing things explode under the wheels of my rollerblades
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I'm not a chemist, but the article talks about it being prepared in a solution of ammonium hydroxide which can be poured on a floor and left to dry. Surely this is what the GP is comparing their memory to, and not a bucket of pure nitrogen trioxide.
A fun thing to make. I made this in the high school chemistry room after school. Filter paper with some iodine crystals, pour some ammonia over and wait for it to dry (as I recall). I am not sure where I learned about it. Often my dad, who was a chemist then, would tell me little tricks like this. (He also turn me on to slathering a small amount of potassium permanganate with glycerin.)
Anyway, I was walking with it after I made it (when it was still damp and in the filter paper) and I accidentally dropped the filter paper in the school hallway. I picked up what I could (I suppose I should have gone back and mopped it up).
It was fun, the small explosions, like tap shoes clacking, when it was dry and walked upon. (Too bad it left brown stains on the linoleum.)
I was fortunate to have not had a large quantity dry. It can be pretty dangerous in large amounts I am told.
My A-level chemistry teacher liked to paint it onto door frames and in the hallways. Apparently one day he'd left some out in his lab in preparation for this prank, then the school had a surprise inspection. He had to teach his class in front of the inspectors while being constantly interrupted by small purple explosions.
He also liked to let off expired fire extinguishers at his sixth formers out of his window, and he once attempted to use them to propel a pupil sitting on a wheely office chair. Very memorable teacher!
I've always heard that the incredibly sensitive volatility of this compound precludes the ability to even amass it in large quantities, because it will essentially fulminate under its own weight.
I accidentally dropped the filter paper in the school hallway
It's wonderful when "accidents" like this happen.
MIT has a long tradition of hacks, and among the first documented hacks in the 1870s for marching practice:
> in which students sprinkled iodide of nitrogen over the grounds of a military drill, causing explosions under classmates' boots.
https://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/mit_p...
It's a great shame John Walker is no longer with us, he was a bright fellow (even though I thought his company's products were too expensive). I loved his Hacker's Diet book, a true techie's approach to dieting. Certainly worth a read if one's interested in such things.
No doubt those of us who've gravitated to this link like watching things that go bang so make sure you read Walker's link at the bottom of the Nitrogen Triiodide page to his article on FOOF—aka Dioxygen Difluoride (O2F2). Also, make sure you read the link in that page to Derek Lowe's blog in Science's site Things I Won't Work With.
Every chemist should read Lowe's blogs, they're not only informative but often entertaining. I've copied the FOOF link here for convenience (this truly is chemistry at the bleeding edge):
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
Also notable this article is by John Walker, co-founder of Autodesk, who passed last year.
Also the author of The Hacker's Diet. fourmilab.ch was a very interesting website.
This was a favourite for me at school. Had a great chemistry teacher. Always had something that blew up available.
This was motivational until I did A level chemistry a few years later. He vetoed my attempts to make RDX out of hexamine tablets and normal nitric acid. He got suspicious when I was trying to dehydrate nitric acid with sulphuric acid.
Good job I gave up on chem or I’d probably be dead or in prison.
We used to steal Iodine crystals from the chem lab at High School, and set "traps" for the unwary. I have no idea how many clothes we ruined by putting NI3 on seats.
We also wired cans in || and wired up the boys' urinal so that they could "complete the circuit".
Ah, the Good Old Days before Workplace Health and Safety, or MDS.
Is there a good archive of this kinds of "not normally taught" chemistry things some where?
Since Librivox is on the front page, here's a 1910 book reading, pretty good quality, of "The Romance of Modern Chemistry" which covers NI3 (Ch 15) and many similar topics. Surprising how much chemical knowledge existed then, even without a solid understanding of QM:
https://librivox.org/the-romance-of-modern-chemistry-by-jame...
An interesting feature is that if you go up the periodic table on the iodine column, the species become less reactive, with nitrogen bromide being explosive but more stable than NI3 and the fluorine derivative, NF3 being stable enough to use in industrial semiconductor applications (etching), and with the benefit of not being a persistent environmental pollutant due to relatively rapid breakdown.
NF3 is very different than the other nitrogen halides and used as a silicon etchant, but re: environmental concerns, perhaps you're confusing it with something else? It's an extremely potent greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenhous...) Surprisingly less toxic than some other gases used in the semiconductor industry though!
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, but Shakhashiri's "Chemical Demonstrations" series includes Nitrogen Triiodide among many other things: https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Demonstrations-Handbook-Teac...
Edit: It looks like the ScienceMadness page references the exact location: https://www.sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Nitrogen_tri...
Science Madness forums may be an okay place to find better references than I'd know about. If you just want to see some fun chemistry and not necessarily take it that seriously or learn to do it yourself, there's some good people on youtube. Some of my favorites are Extractions&Ire (and his sister channel), NileRed and Stryopyro. Some people in some of those communities can probably point you in the right direction for whatever you're looking for.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/higher-states-brom...
And his whole series of "Things I Won't Work With"
If you were not "normally taught" how to do this stuff then you probably shouldn't do it.
If you weren't asked for patronising advice you probably shouldn't offer it.
I went to a high school with an specialization in Chemistry in Argentina. We made a lot of Chemistry experiments, like 16 hours per week.
One day the other half of my class was at the lab. They were boiling some organic compound with potassium permanganate and probably sulfuric acid. The idea is that you have them in a flask, and a long refrigerated vertical tube to condense the vapors and send the liquid inside the flask again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflux#Reflux_in_chemical_reac...
They forgot to add some porcelain scrap to the flask, that is useful to get an even boiling instead of big bubbles. So they added them while it was already boiling!
It boiled too fast and create a jet of hot mix that reached the ceiling that was like 3 meters (18 foots) high. Lucky nobody got hurt, but as a reminder we had a brown mark in the ceiling for a few years.
Many experiments need supervision from someone that knows what they are doing.
> Many experiments need supervision from someone that knows what they are doing.
Of course. He was neither saying or offering that though.
For the record, 3 meters are more like 10ft.
Doing it is significantly different than asking for a repository of similar projects. Arguably this kind of gate keeping is specifically what I'm trying to step around.
This does bring back fun memories! My favorite application was to make the game of ping pong a little more random. Small amounts scattered across the table would result in puffs of purple smoke and the ball changing direction.
I made this for my high school chemistry project. We made it in the morning so it would be ready for our afternoon class.
It was drying in the chemistry back office and there must have been a draft. It exploded during a silent study hall.
Somehow they let us remake it for class that afternoon. We tried to put it on the floor as a joke, but our teacher was wearing sandals that day (no lab). She wasn't happy about it.
I originally got the idea (and prank idea) the previous year from a retiring chemistry teacher.
lol - great story. So many good stories here about this stuff.
I agree with others who say it's dangerous, but only if you use sufficient quantities, or contained (don't contain!). A few crystals sprinkled in different places will just produce the pops and not hurt anything - I think! :)
From memory: size of a full stop or white sesame seed will already produce a very (but not painfully) loud bang; whereas a speck so tiny on the ground you can't readily see it from standing height is sufficient for a "walking over" prank, surprisingly loud for how tiny it is.
The ultrafast snappy pop and purple smoke is satisfying, but it does stain.
I like the comment about ping pong - hilarious use case.
The Anarchist Cookbook had a recipe for this IIRC, called ANTI (Ammonia Nitrate TriIodide). My chemistry teacher was not pleased at the pits left in the classroom countertops.
Yes, its an old one. Inject it into a keyhole.
Kids - do note that the Anarchist's Cookbook is absolutely verboten in the UK at least. My old man was an ATO so I didn't need a copy.
The original AC will be several elements in every wordlist that every intelligence service ever has. It is probably quite close to EICAR in that world.
> It is probably quite close to EICAR in that world.
I recall reading some story where the author was able to do a denial of service attack on a system by putting EICAR in it, causing a kind of autoimmune dysfunction.
There's a good DEFCON 29 presentation on this topic. https://youtu.be/cIcbAMO6sxo
If you skip forward to 16m 33s you'll be treated to a lively streak of invective from the passenger of a car whose driver has just confirmed that feeding EICAR to a parking system prevents it from letting any vehicle past the barrier.
It's a very poorly done book, compared to the 100% American TM-21-210.
It (AC) was written by anarchists (lol) and not the US Army.
Perhaps, I might read your formal critique?
I think you misspelled "Anglican" there
I made this in high school, shortly after my AP Chemistry exam in 1992. I left it out to dry under the fume hood, and my teacher, not knowing what it was, moved it and BOOM! Fun times.
Reminds me of my AP chem class 16 years later. We were always mixing stuff up in the lab. Good times.
This reminds me of triacetone triperoxide (tatp).
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_t...
I almost got banned from high school chemistry for making this (UK 1970's). Made it during break in middle of Chemistry lab while the teacher was out, and sadly was rather sloppy - got it over the floor, threw damp filter paper covered in it into the waste paper basket (which later self-detonated), etc.
I remember this from middle school science class, the purple cloud after was fun.
If you like crazy chemistry stories, be sure to read "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?".
One of the first stories in it involve the high school chemistry club breaking into the local college to get materials for some experiments. Along the way they find metallic sodium in kerosene and take some by shoving it in someone's back pocket. After some time passes it predictably catches fire. But don't worry: they have water handy!
My first job out of college was working for a similar company to how Gergel's was, in the 1970's.
Founded by one of my professors, I learned a lot.
We distributed his isoproply bromide, among others, and he sold a lot of ours too.
I gradually migrated from chemical entrpreneurialism with my own chemicals, over to my own electronics with other peoples' chemicals :)
It can still can get more toxic some times than others :\
> There is no risk of terrorists using NI3 because anybody who made it in sufficient quantities to do serious damage would succeed only in blowing themselves up: those who do so are humorous, not terrible.
...not gonna say more, but, buried in the info and video there IS actually an idea for overcoming this nasty limitation (if you can mostly live up with "quasi-random detonation time", which could be acceptable for _some_ nefarious uses). Tbh I'd be more curious if any current gen LLM can figure it out.
Even if you were okay with all of that, there's still better compounds to use as weapons. It's just not a good one at _all_.
It _is_ still dangerous though. A lot of people/writeups discount the danger. You really want to use ear/eye protection, do it outside, and try to avoid glass for the final steps to reduce the shrapnel risk.
And it's probably obvious, but: it's not a good prank. You can really fuck up someone's ears or worse.
I think I know what you mean. Probably impractical for nefarous use still. When he said "chemists can't do experiments on it" I thought "why not?"
> NI3 has no practical applications whatsoever
And yet almost every comment here is from someone who learnt or acheived something thanks to nitrogen triiodide.
I think it's pretty clear from context they meant industrially, or beyond edutainment value.
triiodide is such a beautiful word. Great one for a bar bet on whether there are English words with two consecutive I's!
Mr. Benzinger!
My dad talks about making this stuff as a teen. It started with a chemistry kit that came with all sorts of dangerous things they would never in a million years sell targeting to a kid again. This peaked his interest in chemistry and he came across nitrogen triiodide while researching at a library with actual paper books lol. The ingredients were of no difficulty to obtain back then. They made this stuff and had fun setting some of it off. But he then told me that the next day he and his buddy thought let’s go set off some more. But he thought about it and they both said but what if the stuff on the edge of the jar has dried? Yes they made a fairly big sample. They were too nervous to open it so he told me he dug a hole and carefully moved it and hurried it. It sucks that people do bad things with chemicals as I would love to play around with things like this carefully in a safe setting without risk of other being hurt.
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