Dealing With Unstable Compounds: Part 3

Ah yes, metal azides. Most excellent and unpredictable explosions.

My first job in a research group was to act as the “hands” for a graduate student that had been preparing a new Tellurium azide. He had prepared a small amount (about 50 mg) in a Monel can and was in the drybox working up the reaction when it exploded in the bottom of the can. Unfortunately, the metal can served to focus the explosion and neatly sheared off the ends of two of his fingers thus creating a job opening for me. My first job was to repeat the chemistry that the graduate student had been doing. They said that it would be safer because I would do it in a glass vessel so the explosions would not be as extreme (the bursting pressure of a well made glass vessel was about 10 atmosheres according the group elders). Thankfully the grad student was so close to completion that they decided he would not need the reaction to graduate and I was moved over to the sulphur-nitrogen work.