Reacting one element with another to make a compound. How much more “elemental” can it get? No solvent and no waste, just element on element at Venusian temperatures. But, an organikker doing inorganic synthesis? Is this a Coen brothers movie? What strange overlap of events lead to this redox redux?
Paracelsus would have been pleased at this transformation, though his interests with this compound might have diverged from mine. Whereas I as a modern chemyst would add a nucleophile to my blessed conjugation of elements, Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) would probably have more mundane applications like the treatment of consumption or perhaps an indelicate medicament for that tell-tale abscess.
After a career of conducting elaborate procedures for the preparation of strange organic compounds, it is refreshing to spend a month performing a non-incandescent combustion of elements. There is joy in doing a thing well, taking the elements to their endpoint as fast as the equipment will allow. Squeezing maximum performance from the system and myself. It is a kind of poetry in motion.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
A postdoctoral advisor told me he liked students that were trained in Germany because they were not as terretorial, they could do both inorganic and organic preps equally. An organic chemist did inorganic chemistry preps with enthusiasm (?) or perhaps training that was equivalent to that for an organic chemistry prep.
That said, with my organic training, I watched a student working on his diplom prepare some aluminum bromide. Yep, a little aluminum foil and a family pack of bromine bottles.
A beautiful solid addition funnel and a pool of bromine. We turned off the lights and watched the fireworks as the scraps of aluminum dropped into the bromine.
I’ve forgotten the work up for that one – how did he remove the excess bromine? But, I know the addition funnel was rendered useless. Too much heat had deformed the teflon screw shaft I think.
Yeah, my PhD advisor liked to have a few German or Swiss post-docs around because of their generally excellent technical training. We had a German and an Austrian in our group for 2 years. That was exciting. They would indulge in some serious arguments that always ended with shouting in the mother tonque. The Austrian would always complain- “One country, 60 million a**holes!”. The German is now a prominent professor in Germany.
You are not making zirconium tetrabromide, by any chance? I have seen it made, as drwrw describes, from Zr metal and elemental bromine, and the sparks of white-hot metal, the dark red bromine and fountain of brown bromine vapours was unforgettable. (Sugar chemists in Czechoslovakia could not afford to buy the stuff so they were making their own)
No, not Zr. Confidentiality prevents me from spilling the beans. I can say that it is a post-transition metal, though.
I think the title to this post – is absolute comic genius… gaussling!
I agree with some of your “overall” point:
“After a career of conducting elaborate procedures for the preparation of strange organic compounds, it is refreshing to spend a month performing a non-incandescent combustion of elements. There is joy in doing a thing well, taking the elements to their endpoint as fast as the equipment will allow. Squeezing maximum performance from the system and myself. It is a kind of poetry in motion.”
If I had my way, I’d put more emphasis within education on CURRENT AWARENESS and TRANSFERABLE SKILLS.
So researchers can move between disciplines – even outside their traditional speciality areas.
Why not? – It gives more life skills and more rounded characters/experiences.
Also, this is one of the reasons I like “Green Chemistry”, it gives me freedom of scope I wouldn’t get elsewhere… in that it encompasses enough to get lost in!
Love the blog.
Mark
The Green Chemistry Technical Blog