Challenge #01655-D194: Expensive Reactions
On the topic of "Humans are Insane," I present: Every chemist who has ever willingly worked with something that ended up in the "Things I Won't Work With" guy's articles. Please note, many of said chemists were attempting to come up with new, better, rocket fuel, so it was designed to be highly explosive from the get-go.
(can't embed the link for some reason, gets flagged as spam) -- RecklessPrudence
Humans are recognised as patently unkillable across the Galactic Alliance. But even with their gung-ho attitude towards things animate and inanimate that are venomous, poisonous, or otherwise dangerous, there are actually things that humans prefer not to do. Lots of them involve violent chemical reactions.
Those who continue to invoke those chemical reactions are... unique.
They turn up to work in flame-retardant armour padding, and don the armour-plated livesuit that they work in with an air of grim determination. Every day, they step into their re-enforced laboratory as if they know that they may not walk back out. And this might be true. Humanity has made a career out of finding ways to blow up its mortal enemy - humanity.
In the process of blowing itself up, humanity has also discovered a large number of reactions that, while impossible to weaponise, are also intensely useful for increasingly sophisticated technologies. Unfortunately, the most useful ones are also next to impossible to industrialise.
So far.
Humans do not like blowing themselves up[1], and therefore work very hard at making certain it doesn't happen.
"This step must be performed in a pure Nitrogen atmosphere," said Hal Smith, adjusting the lab's environment. "Both compounds are highly volatile when in contact with oxygen. If we get around to industrialising this, I propose an assembly line with an airlock. Or just put the entire factory in a nitrogen bubble. We also need sensors to detect when the reaction is working."
Very carefully, as if defusing an unexploded bomb, Hal introduced one part to the other by means of a drip stand. Watching the beaker below whilst barely breathing. When it began to fizz violently and smoke, he turned off the drip feed and sealed the beaker. Counted under his breath. After the seething fizz went down, he un-sealed the beaker and added three more drips.
The process would continue until the fizzing stopped.
And when it was all done, he would have twenty MSWU[2] of a compound guaranteed to protect nanocircuitry from Heisenburg errors. Vitally necessary for the most advanced computing known to civilised space.
[1]: Blowing up enemies is just peachy.
[2]: Milli-Standard Weight Units. Roughly equivalent to a gram, and a thousandth of a Standard Weight Unit. Sometimes pronounced, "miss woo"
[AN: You can read all of the things the guy won't work with over here. You're welcome]
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Spanky1]
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