Author Archives: gaussling

About gaussling

Gaussling is a senior scientist in the chemical business. He occasionally breaks glassware, spreads confusion and has been known to generate new forms of hazardous waste. Gaussling also digs aerospace, geology, and community theatre.

Euphemisms This Morning

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A collection of euphemisms from a single 30 minute meeting.

Cold eyes review– outside review

Get engaged– bring into the group

Out of pocket– gone

Dot eyes and cross Ts– tidy up details

Just to jump in– I’m interrupting

The old pot makes the best stew– try an old method

Reach out– contact someone

Get on the radar– pay attention to

Just a bit of corporate-speak here. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I have a collection of salty and scatological euphemisms from my days on the farm and while working in construction, but I keep them close to my chest. I think others are grateful for that.

FOOF – Dioxygen Difluoride and ClF3 Chlorine Trifluoride

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Just today, as the open door to my golden years stands gaping before me, I learned of a substance called dioxygen difluoride, FOOF. It’s also known as perfluoroperoxide at the NIST Chemistry WebBook site. Seems like I’m always the last one to the oxidizer party. This rather unhappy substance can be prepared as shown below. The word is that the orange-yellow solid is only stable below −160 °C.

O2 + F2 → O2F2 (electric discharge, 183 °C) Wikipedia.

2 O3F2 → O2 + 2 O2F2

Another synthesis can be found in a 1991 paper in the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry.


Image from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride. A mixture of fluorine and oxygen gas were heated to 700° C then, according to the abstract “rapidly cooled on the outer surface of stainless steel tubes. The tubes were refrigerated by a liquid oxygen bath pressurized to >7600 torr with helium. Six grams of O2F2 were produced in less than an hour.”

Derek Lowe mentioned in one post in his Blog In the Pipeline that FOOF was in the list of materials he won’t work with. Derek also mentioned chlorine trifluoride. A method of preparing this substance is shown below. This substance is a powerful fluorinating agent and reacts in hypergolic fashion with asbestos and sand according to chemist John Drury Clark. Clark wrote a book called Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants based on his experiences with rocket propellant research. Clark said that the great toxicity of ClF3 was the “least of its problems”. It’s ability to react in a hypergolic manner with nearly everything was a barrier to its use. It could be stored in metal containers that were first passivated with fluorine gas.

3 F2 + Cl2 → 2 ClF3

Uranium hexafluoride is produced with chloride trifluoride-

U + 3 ClF3 → UF6 + 3 ClF

According to Wikipedia, ClF3 is used to clean Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) chambers. Not surprisingly, prior to WWII the Nazis had experimented with ClF3 as a chemical warfare agent called N-Stoff. Production halted when the Red Army overran the facility in 1945. The substance was never used in war.

The “Effects of Nuclear Weapons”

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About 45 years ago I picked up a copy of a book titled The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977, edited by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan and prepared by the US Department of Defense. As a plus the book came with a plastic circular slide rule that calculates weapons effects as a function of explosive yield and altitude. Being interested in nuclear energy and being a slide rule collector, this was a thrilling moment. I found it at the local Goodwill store. Still have it.

The book goes into all of the phenomenology of a nuclear detonation as well as the effects on the surrounding environment. It describes the blast effects, thermal radiation effects, crater dimensions, nuclear radiation and fallout, electromagnetic pulse and biological effects. Apparently, there was a lot of curve fitting of data over the years of weapons research that produced mathematical approximations allowing a calculating device to be made.

To be blunt, being overenthusiastic about weaponry has never struck me as, well, healthy. But I have always been fascinated by scientific extrema. Biggest, fastest, smallest, heaviest, hottest … you get the picture. What happens near the boundaries? Nuclear explosives and explosions certainly produce extreme effects.

I lived during the cold war up to the point where I finished my postdoc the same time as when Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union. The international dynamics of Soviet Cold War politics was interesting to follow at the time. Having some familiarity with nuclear weapons effects helped to accrue a bit of perspective on the nuclear threat element of the whole unfortunate time.

The NOTAM Issue

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Recently, the FAA had a fiasco with its NOTAM service. Departures were halted system-wide and there was general fear and loathing in the air transport industry. According to Flying magazine, in a preliminary statement the FAA is claiming the cause of the shutdown was related to a damaged database file. The purpose of the NOTAM is to provide important and current information to pilots. There have been facile comparisons to the previous fiasco with Southwest Airlines. Easy does it there folks.

NOTAM used to stand for Notice To Airmen. It was changed to Notice To Air Missions. I guess this is now gender neutral.

Meg Godlewski at Flying magazine writes-

NOTAMs provide essential information to pilots about the abnormal status of a component of the national airspace system, such as ground-based navigational system failures at airports, GPS outages, and facility closures. Pilots are required to check for NOTAMs pertinent to for their departure airport, route, and destination as part of preflight planning.

The content of a NOTAM is written in a highly abbreviated manner. This continues from the days of the teletype machine where brevity was important due to the limitations of communication technology. An example of a NOTAM from an FAA website is shown below-

e. Changes to usable runway length and declared distances

EXAMPLES-

…RWY 19 THR DISPLACED 300FT MARKING NOT STD. DECLARED DIST: TORA 6827FT TODA 6827FT ASDA 6827FT LDA 6527FT. ….
…RWY 01 DECLARED DIST: TORA 6827FT TODA 6827FT ASDA 6527FT LDA 6527FT. …

NOTE-

Runway 19 threshold is displaced 300 feet, therefore the Runway 19 landing LDA is shortened by 300 feet. The LDA and ASDA for Runway 1 are also shortened by 300 feet.

EXAMPLE-

…RWY 05/23 NE 500FT CLSD. DECLARED DIST: RWY 05 TORA 7002FT TODA 7002FT ASDA 7002FT LDA 7002FT. RWY 23 TORA 7002FT TODA 7002FT ASDA 7002FT LDA 7002FT. …

NOTE-

Construction on Runway 05 requires 500 feet to be closed to protect a construction area thus changing declared distances to Runways 05 and 23.

EXAMPLE-

…RWY 08/26 CHANGED TO 10000FT X 150FT. DECLARED DIST: RWY 08 TORA 9000FT TODA 9500FT ADSA 9000FT LDA 9000FT. RWY 26 TORA 9000FT TODA 9000FT ASDA 9400FT LDA 10000FT….

Notice that each example has a “translation” in plain English. It seems like there is no longer a technology-related need for this kind of abbreviated and cryptic text.

In government there is a general hesitancy to fund upgrades to infrastructure, unless maybe it relates to defense. An upgrade of the NOTAM system isn’t like executing a moon landing or splitting the atom. It is plainly needed IT work and when the congress gets through parading their indignity in front of the cameras, they should be able to get started on funding and mandating a fix in the system.

Living on Mars

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I was born a few weeks before Sputnik was launched. I followed the manned space program through the 1960’s with great enthusiasm and watched the moon landing of Apollo 11 live on a black and white television in 1969. At the time we were inundated with breathless descriptions of the Saturn V launch vehicle in terms of its size. Big, huge and colossal were some of the adjectives. Eventually I got to see the Saturn V rocket lying on its side on static display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. The first stage engines were quite impressive. Yes, the rocket was (is) pretty big, but it was still small enough to be on the human scale. It’s not that I was disappointed- I wasn’t. But it was a smaller kind of behemoth than I had imagined.

As I grew older I became a Trekkie and watched the reruns and new series religiously. I began to believe in “The Federation” as a model of civilization could be a viable thing us, except for transporters, phasors and warp speed. Flying lessons and a steady diet of sci-fi novels kept my mind on space.

Today I am still interested in all sorts of aerospace technology. Except one. That would be Elon Musk’s plan to settle Mars. It is hard to doubt his sincerity in wanting to do it and SpaceX is making progress in that direction. There are many good reasons for a manned Mars landing and exploration. But, permanent settlement is a very different matter. I’m thinking primarily about mining, metallurgy and agriculture.

A rock is defined as an aggregation of different minerals. Mars has rocks and therefore minerals. No doubt the periodic table is well represented there. On earth there are mechanisms at work that, over long time periods, serve to concentrate many metals. And by concentrate I mean going from average terrestrial abundance to levels that are high enough to economically recover. Hydrothermal fluids, i.e., hot, pressurized water saturated with minerals, that eventually deposit and fill faults (vein formation) in the crust with concentrated deposits. Over time the veins are exposed at the surface and become accessible. This is a very important mechanism for the formation of viable ore deposits of many metals.

Even the very best ore deposits on earth require large amounts of electricity, diesel, and water to concentrate the ore to where smaller scale processes can isolate the metal. Ball milling, extraction, flotation and electrowinning of ore concentrates is needed for efficient recovery and is essential for recovering many metals. Other metals like the platinum group metals precipitate from within a cooling magma formation and settle into narrow layers of enriched rock.

My point is that mining is a tough job in earth with all the supplies you need. That won’t be true on Mars. Production of metal articles from Martian metals will be a tough nut to crack. Shipping of essentials to Mars will be needed for a very long time.

Going to Mars to Live

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I have not been asked about the long-term colonizing of Mars yet so I thought I’d make it clear that I’m not in favor of it. Just imagine living in a super-isolated pressure can 24/7 on a very cold world with no breathable air. It would be like going to jail with the added risk of asphyxiating and freezing to death all at once. No flora or fauna to cheer things up. Just the same tiresome people with the same tiresome board games to play. No smells beyond that of other people. Over time cliques and romance may form and dissolve into antagonism. No web of life other than just you and your gut flora.

You: Wanna go to Mars?

Me: What, are you nuts??

The Neutron Howitzer

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At my undergraduate institution, lo these many years ago, our physics department had a neutron howitzer. The school was a medium sized state land grant institution mostly known for producing teachers and nurses. But it also had a decent chemistry department from which I spring-boarded my chemistry career. This device was an education and research tool from the post WWII atomic age. Recall that it was a period that promised nuclear electric energy too cheap to meter.

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.148.3667.258
https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/s-pictured–geiger-counter-b-neutron-howitzer-c-radioactive-source-decays-via-positron-d-g-q64148549

I would hazard a guess that the word “howitzer” was used because it’s application involves bombardment of atomic nuclei. In the center of a water tank, a source comprised of one of several highly active alpha emitters like Plutonium, Americium, Radium, or Polonium is exposed to beryllium which produces a neutron. The alpha source activity was typically 1 to 3 Curies in contact with beryllium and located within a small diameter tube penetrating the water tank, producing a “beam” of neutron flux passing through the tube. Materials to be activated are exposed to this flux for a set period of time.

Our neutron howitzer was used for a freshman chemistry lab to measure the half-life of an indium radioisotope. A piece of indium foil would be neutron activated by a timed exposure to a neutron flux and then placed in a radiation counter to collect counts over time from radioactive decay in the indium sample. Indium-115 in the sample would be activated by the absorption of a neutron to form a small amount of Indium-116m1 which emits gammas with a half-life of 54.2 minutes according to this source. This short half-life was ideal for a freshman lab period.

I’m quite sure that the school got rid of the neutron howitzer long ago. Nuclear radiation of any kind scares the beejeebers out of school administrators and assorted folks mucking about on campus. The principle of CYA is always at work in our institutions. CYA refers to Cover Your Actions, wink wink, nod nod.

The nuclear chemistry of neutron production and absorption-

Beryllium-9 + alpha particle ==> neutron + Carbon-12

A beryllium-9 nucleus absorbs an alpha particle (helium-4 nucleus) and then decays producing a neutron and Carbon-12 atom.

Indium-115 + 1 neutron ==> Indium-116m1 ==> Indium-116 + gamma radiation

The neutrons generated can impact an Indium-115 nucleus and be absorbed, producing a metastable Indium-116m1 nucleus. Nuclear reactions often produce nuclei in an excited energy state. An excited nucleus can “de-excite” by the release of a gamma photon through an isomeric transition (IT), not unlike atomic fluorescence.

It is interesting to note that the large capture cross section of indium-115 for thermal neutrons has been exploited for the survey of high-energy neutron fluxes. Indium foil is encased in paraffin and placed in a cadmium container. High-energy neutrons entering this composition are cooled to produce thermal neutrons which are then captured by the indium. The thermal neutron flux is proportional to the high-energy flux and the system can be used for the instantaneous detection and counting of neutrons.

In one lab for a class I took in grad school called “Radioisotope Techniques”, we had a cloud chamber up and running. The professor brought in a neutron source on the end of an 8 foot pole. He swung it over by the cloud chamber and there was a sudden burst of trails in the ethanol vapor. Neutrons were colliding with protons in the ethanol vapor creating ion pairs, leading to condensation vapor trails zipping around in the chamber. The neutron source had 1 Curie of plutonium in it. This was in the radiation biology department. The department had a 7,000 Curie cesium-137 gamma source we got to use as well. It turns out that if you expose tomato plants to intense Cs-137 gamma radiation even briefly, it stunts their ability to uptake phosphorus-32 phosphate. Yeah, imagine that.

Opinion Polling in Russia, 1/5/23

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The internet magazine Spiegel International, January 5, 2023, has an enlightening interview piece with the independent Russian opinion pollster and sociologist Lev Gudkov. His organization is the Levada Center which is described as the only independently operating opinion research institute in Russia.

Let’s cut to the chase. The tone of the interview is quite depressing in a near term if peaceful resolution of the Putin war is your hope. In case you were harboring the view that a groundswell of popular Russian sentiment against their country’s hostilities in Ukraine might lead to a change in policy in the Kremlin anytime soon, you will be disappointed because that is not what the polling suggests.

The polling also suggests that public sympathy for the plight of the Ukrainians is near zero. The idea of Ukraine as a sovereign state is not popular among the public.

When asked about public skepticism of the war effort-

DER SPIEGEL: What reasons do people give for their skepticism?

Gudkov: They say the operation is taking too long, that no progress has been made. People worry almost exclusively about their own country’s military defeat, the chaos in the army, the incompetence of the leadership. For years, they were told that the Russian army was the strongest and had miracle weapons, but that myth has evaporated.

DER SPIEGEL: The war itself isn’t being questioned.

Gudkov: No, the attacks on Ukraine and the massacres play no role. The Russians have little compassion for the Ukrainians. Almost no one here talks about the fact that people are being killed in Ukraine.

When asked about popular response to the war-

DER SPIEGEL: So they avoid it.

Gudkov: The war has exposed mechanisms in society that have existed since Soviet times. Out of habit, people identify with the state and adopt its rhetoric about their fatherland’s struggle against fascism and Nazism, just like they did in Soviet times, to justify the situation. It’s all been present in people’s minds for quite some time, and propaganda has activated these patterns. They block out any compassion and empathy for what is happening in Ukraine. Those feelings only apply their own dead and wounded soldiers, “our men.”

Other points made by Gudkov-

  • The potential for substantial public civil unrest was low in Soviet times and it remains so today.
  • Sanctions mostly affect the 20 % urban middle class.
  • Mobilization lead to decreased support for the war.
  • Mobilization was seen as a sign of defeat.
  • People are unwilling to protest because of the police and repression.
  • Fear of nuclear war has built up since the annexation of Crimea. “Soviet stereotypes were serviced, such as the complex of Russians supposedly living in a besieged fortress, being victims and not being liked by anyone.”
  • Gudkov says “In my opinion, the “Putinian” person is a continuation of the Soviet person, but the former is deeply cynical, confused and disoriented. The Soviet person knew that life was not rich, that there was a constant lack of something, be it goods or variety. But they believed that things would get better with time“
  • Russian trust in Ukraine collapsed with the loss of President Viktor Yanukovych who was loyal to the Kremlin.
  • Television broadcaster Margarita Simonyan famously said that if Russia loses “we will all end up in court in The Hague, from the janitor right up to the leaders.” It sounds laughable but who knows how much hyperbole people will absorb?

Russian state control of the media has been very successful in controlling the views of the population as has isolation from outside media. The challenge a belligerent Kremlin poses to the west and to democracy will be with us for a long time. Capitulating to Putin’s Kremlin would be a very regrettable mistake.

Colorado Cricket

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I was surprised to learn today that Colorado has a cricket league. From down in my hole under that flat rock along the riverbank I often miss out on seismic news items like this. Good Lord. What’s waiting for us next? A plate of peas and warm beer?

This is something new to ignore. Well, okay. I do enjoy watching rugby. Unlike NFL football, something is always happening in rugby. Even when a player goes down, they just play around him. Plus, there is the Haka ceremonial dance that the team from NZ performs. Such interesting savagery.