From: bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan)
Subject: Picric acid?
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 04:40:11 GMT
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Date Entered: 01-05-93 23:33
In message <1993Jan4.204714.21153@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com>,
billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson) writes:

BN>bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan) writes:
BN>:
BN>: Picric acid was used in most Ontario high school chemistry courses in
BN>: the 1940s and 1950s. The problem with it is that over time (years), the
BN>: stuff crystalizes and becomes _very_ explosive. It's no longer part of

BN>Not true. What happens is that it gets contaminated with various metals.
BN>These metals combine with the picric acid to form very sensitive picrates.
BN>It is these picrates that hare the hazard.

I stand corrected. The stuff *does* crystalize, I (and the fireman who
explained it to us) thought it was a breakdown. Whether it's due to age,
contamination, or cosmic rays, it's still nothing you want to mess with.

BN>Picric acid is a secondary high explosive. It is a secondary explosive
BN>because it is not easy to initiate the pure chemical by shock, friction
BN>or flame.  It is a more powerful explosive than TNT.

Yeah, that part I remember. They were _very_ careful with it. I'm not
sure what else they grabbed, but the picric acid was the stuff that they
were _seriously_ concerned about.

BN>: any cirriculum (sp?) but some of the stuff is still sitting around in
BN>: old labs. In 1979, the fire department checked out our lab after a fire
BN>: and found something like five or six GALLONS of the stuff. They took it
BN>: out into the football field and and detonated it with a rifle. That
BN>: stuff is serious, kiddies.

BN>No way.  If that had happened, you would not have had a football field
BN>left. There would have been a sizeable crater in the ground when that
BN>much exploded.

Yes way. They didn't blow it _all_ up. What happened (as I recall) was
that they grabbed what they could transport, and took that with them for
disposal. It was only the stuff that they considered too dangerous to
transport (what percentage of the original five or six containers, I
don't know), they just took out and blew up.

BN>By the way, a bullet does not detonate picric acid reliably. If they
BN>did so, with some of it, they were fools. Was the football team able
BN>to play, with picric acid and glass scattered all over the field?

They were fools, I guess. Maybe they put something that would detonate
next to the acid, and aimed for that? I wasn't taking notes at the time,
and students were hardly permitted an onsight inspection.

What I saw was them take the stuff out of the lab, and about an half our
or so later, a bunch of cops carried a big box out into the center of
the back football field and blasted it. Big bang. EOpicric.

Since it happened in January, on the back football field, I doubt it was
a serious problem for the football team, since they didn't use the back
field.  As for scattered glass on the field, the level of vandalism at
our school was such that a few more hundred shards would probably not be
noticed. ;-( [and for all I know, those jugs could have been plastic
rather than glass]

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