Quote of the Day - Chemists Like to Blow Sh*t Up Edition

This is out of the archives, more than 10 years ago, but even so... Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride | Science | AAAS

A. G. Streng was a chemist at Temple University in 1960s. Apparently OSHA hadn't been invented yet, because he did some stuff. Derek Lowe is a chemist who had some things to say about Streng's work.

If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic. I ran out of vulgar expletives after the second page. A. G. Streng, folks, absolutely takes the corrosive exploding cake, and I have to tip my asbestos-lined titanium hat to him.

The article includes other gems, like...

Even Streng had to give up on some of the planned experiments, though (bonus dormitat Strengus?). Sulfur compounds defeated him, because the thermodynamics were just too titanic. Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens. . .and 433 kcal, which is the kind of every-man-for-himself exotherm that you want to avoid at all cost. The sulfur chemistry of FOOF remains unexplored, so if you feel like whipping up a batch of Satan's kimchi, go right ahead.

Hat tip for this bit of insanity goes to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony and Daily News Stuff 27 July 2023: Worse Is Better Edition

Derek Lowe is a research chemist working in the pharmaceutical industry and not a solid-state physicist, but he's good at sniffing out suspect research papers and doesn't smell anything obviously rotten here.

Also his series of posts on Things I Won't Work With contains a number of timeless classics.