# EXPLODING GOLD. O.M.G



## aflacglobal (May 1, 2007)

_*ANY TAKERS*_

Now if you shoot a werewolf with a silver bullet what would happen if it was a silver bullet with gold gun powder. hugh ?
Interesting. :shock: 



Fulminating Gold, the First High Explosive:
Since gold is so difficult to combine with other elements, all gold compounds are fairly unstable. Some much more so than others, though: In 1659, Thomas Willis and Robert Hooke demonstrated that a powder of gold hydrazide explodes on a mere concussion, without the need for air or sparks (which were once thought to be required for any kind of ignition). DAM !!!!!

Gold hydrazide (also known as aurodiamine) is a water-soluble substance obtained by letting an ammoniacal solution react with an auric hydroxide precipitate (itself obtained from a gold solution prepared with aqua regia). Gold hydrazide has a dirty olive-green color (AuHNNH2 ). 

Gold hydrazide is apparently only one of several explosive compounds which have been called fulminating gold (aurum fulminans). Around 1603, another kind of fulminating gold ("Goldkalck" or "Gold Calx") was described as the precipitate of gold by potassium carbonate. 

These kinds of "fulminating gold" are distinct from "gold fulminate", the gold salt of fulminic acid (CNOH), another expensive explosive...
In spite of its price, fulminating gold is said to have been used militarily in 1628. The discovery of fulminating gold has been attributed to the alchemist Basil Valentine (Basilius Valentinus) a legendary benedictine monk who is regarded by some as the "father of modern chemistry We're told Basil Valentine was born in 1394, although his main work (The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine) was first published only in 1599. 

Interesting point as to the stability


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## Noxx (May 1, 2007)

Interesting... Is it stable ? Or shock resistant ?


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## goldsilverpro (May 1, 2007)

A company I worked for was making a 200 oz batch of sodium gold sulfite, in a battery jar on a heating source under a fume hood. One of the intermediate steps used ammonia and somehow the whole thing got dried out and produced gold fulminate or, fulminating gold, which blows up with very slight friction or pressure. The fire dept. evacuated the area for a 1 or 2 block radius. They then ran a fire hose down the fume hood exhaust, backed off, and turned it on. It flooded the fulminate and prevented it from going off. 

At the same company, a lab guy was weighing a few milligrams of gold fulminate. It went off and blew out a 12" chunk of the stone benchtop.

At another place I worked, the guys were cleaning the plant. There were probably 200 buckets sitting around, each with something in them. One guy was condensing the bucket contents. One bucket contained nothing but a filter paper with about 50 grams of old dried up residue. Earlier in the day, I had seen this material and had even picked it up. Scary. When he dumped this stuff into another bucket, the residue exploded. It blew the bottom out of the bucket, blew one leg of his Levi's off, burned his leg, set fire to a 6' diameter spot on the ceiling, and these roman candle like things that shot out in all directions created about 20 spot fires around the perimeter of the room. After the explosion, I immediately came in the room to assist and saw the whole thing. We later figured the residue was a dried mixture of ammonia, silver, and sodium hydroxide - the ingredients for making silver azide.

The common ingredients for these explosive mixtures are ammonia and a dissolved metal. Since then, the only thing I use ammonia for is a final leach for pure gold powder. It dissolves any silver chloride that is present. On the web, you will find PM refining methods that use ammonia. BEWARE!!


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## Noxx (May 1, 2007)

Wow this stuff seems to be very sensitive !


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## catfish (May 1, 2007)

Hey guys:

Does anyone remember the Texas City explosion many many years back. It darn near wiped out the entire population of the city. It was Ammonia Nitrate fertilizer. 

I knew a guy that was using Amonnia Nitrate for the nitric for aqua regia. I explained just how unstable and dangerous this stuff is. Just remember Oakahoma city bombing.


Catfish


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## darkelf2x1 (May 1, 2007)

ah yes the fertilizer fuel bomb... :twisted: 

...

can also use it for a cold compress as well - i think some first aid packs have them


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## Noxx (May 1, 2007)

Yes, he used ammonium nitrate. Even if this stuff is very powerful you can handle Ammonium Nitrate safely. Ammonium Nitrate with fuel is cannot be blown with a standard fuse. You absolutely need a blasting cap. Catfish, I don't think using Ammonium Nitrate for making AR would pose a problem.


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## aflacglobal (May 1, 2007)

*MESSAGE FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HOME LAND SECURITY*

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE HAVE RECORDED ALL YOUR ISP'S AND WE WILL NEED YOU TO PLACE THE LOLI-POP ON THE GROUND AND STEP AWAY FROM THE LITTLE BOY. :shock: 

Yeah i like to find interesting things like this. It relates , plus the formula
doesn't head my head.

Ralph


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## goldsilverpro (May 1, 2007)

I think I read on the web that ammonium nitrate detonates when heated to 800 deg F. That's not normally going to happen but, that's not where the danger is. 

Let's say you made A.R. from ammonium nitrate. Now you have ammonium ion in the solution. 

You dissolve the gold and drop it out. Now you have heavy metals and ammonium ion in the solution.

Next you do what every good refiner does. You neutralize the acid solution with lye - sodium hydroxide

Now you have all of the requirements for a disaster - ammonia, metal, and sodium hydroxide. Also, the solution is now a little alkaline - another requirement.


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## Noxx (May 1, 2007)

But you don't have blasting caps !


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## goldsilverpro (May 1, 2007)

I was talking about presence of the ingredients needed for theproduction of fulminates, azides, etc. For these, you don't need blasting caps. In fact, fulminate of mercury was what the blasting caps used to be made of. Many metals will form fulminates.


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## aflacglobal (May 1, 2007)

OK let's see


The dried powder is extremely sensitive to percussion. Robert Hooke in 1660 put the powder into a spoon, put a heavy coin over it and, by tapping the spoon on a table top, detonated the fulminating gold and sent the coin to the rafters. He used this demonstration of 'exploding without fire' to formulate ideas on combustion, which challenged the Aristotelian doctrine of combustion.


Johann Rudolph Glauber (1604 -1668), a German alchemist, experimented with suicidal quantities of fulminating gold. In De Purgatorio Philosophorum - A Treatise Concerning the Purifying Fire, he describes an explosive method of plating steel needles with gold. DAM NUT !!!!

He recommends preparing the Aurum Fulminans (exploding gold) by precipitation from the gold solution (in aqua-regia), not by using Salt of Tartar (potassium carbonate, made by heating cream of tartar, or potassium tartrate), but with Salt of Urine (ammoniacal salts containing ammonium carbonate).

OH HELL NO!! EXPLODING PISS

The preparation of Salt of Urine is a Bacchanalian process, with unpleasant storage problems. Here is an account from The Art of Distillation by John French, 1651.

"Take of the urine of a young man drinking much wine, as much as you please. Let it stand in glass vessels in putrefaction forty days. Then pouring it from its feces, distill it in a glass gourd in sand until all be dry. Then cohobate the said spirit on the caput mortuary three times. Then distill it in a gourd of a long neck and there will ascend, besides the spirit, a crystalline salt which you may either keep by itself, being called the volatile salt of urine, or mix it with its spirit which will thereby become very penetrating if they be digested for some days together."

Cohobate means "To repeat the distillation of, pouring the liquor back upon the matter remaining in the vessel", as for caput mortuary.....?

Glauber then describes mixing half an ounce of fulminating gold with a flux as a moderator or damper. Half an ounce of any fulminating compound is a huge quantity.

Only milligrams of silver fulminate is used in 'Snaps', small twists of paper containing fulminate coated sand. They explode when thrown onto a hard surface. Fulminating silver is a topic mentioned several times in "The Young Man`s Book of Amusement".

The amount of fulminating gold Glauber used is frightening because of the unpredictable nature of the substance, particularly when impure. From an alchemical text - 

"One must, in this case, submit it to difficult and dangerous manipulations, for one may transform the metal into gold fulminate,... several mortal accidents following upon this preparation. But if the disciple has been instructed in a good school, he will avoid this sophistic snare and operate hermetically; he will thus avert this redoubtable danger."

Note: Fulminating gold is above referred to as gold fulminate. This is incorrect; strictly speaking a fulminate is a salt of fulminic acid CNOH. Gold fulminate Au(OCN) is equally explosive, but is quite different chemically to fulminating gold.

Glauber embeds the needles in his moderated Fulmen (the aurum fulminans and flux mix) and detonates it. The decomposition of the fulminating gold releases gold vapour, which plates the steel needles in a highly spectacular manner. Glauber made explosively plated needles as gifts -

"It is also no contemptible


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## aflacglobal (May 1, 2007)

Note: Fulminating gold is above referred to as gold fulminate. This is incorrect; strictly speaking a fulminate is a salt of fulminic acid CNOH. Gold fulminate Au(OCN) is equally explosive, but is quite different chemically to fulminating gold.


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## goldsilverpro (May 1, 2007)

Fulminate of iodine is one of the mildest fulminates that I've seen. I worked with a jokester in the lab in a very large plating shop. One of his tricks was to mix pure iodine crystals with ammonia. He then would then splatter a little here or there on the decks where the plating was done. When the stuff dried and the platers stepped on it, there would be a "pop", about as loud as a cap gun.


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## NaNO3 (May 1, 2007)

nitrogen triiodide

Didn't i see a post on the iodine leach using ammonia.


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## aflacglobal (May 1, 2007)

Gold Clear as Glass 
The development of microelectronic manufacturing technology has enabled researchers to produce ultra high purity materials. When gold was purified to the limits of the technology, it had the appearance of clear glass and was completely transparent


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## Harold_V (May 2, 2007)

aflacglobal said:


> Gold Clear as Glass
> The development of microelectronic manufacturing technology has enabled researchers to produce ultra high purity materials. When gold was purified to the limits of the technology, it had the appearance of clear glass and was completely transparent



It has long been used as a filter on lenses, but it has little to do with its level of purity. 

You might understand that I'm more than a little skeptical of your claim of being transparent unless it is very finely divided, and that would not be a basis for losing color. Cites, please? 

Harold


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## aflacglobal (May 2, 2007)

something i pulled of the net. I'll see if i can find the link for you.


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## aflacglobal (May 2, 2007)

i DO REMEMBER IT SPOKE OF NANO TECH. i THINK IN THE ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT SENSE. LIKE I.C. WAFFERS


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## Harold_V (May 2, 2007)

While it's not exactly on the same subject, Japanese scientists have been working on high purity iron. They've discovered that in a state of purity that exceeds 999999, it tends to be rust free. I'll have to admit, some elements begin to behave in a strange manner in a high state of purity. 


You might recall that the space suits used for moon exploration had a gold film on the helmets. They also use a flash of gold for some welding filters. 

If you don't know, gold foil, which is considered to be about 70 atoms in thickness, is transparent to some degree. That's why you find it painted black on the back side when it's applied to windows. Otherwise, looking through it, it appears purple, not gold colored. 

A square of gold leaf measures 3" square. If placed in the palm of a hand and not balled up, it will disappear when abraded. The typical sheet weighs approximately one grain. 

Harold


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## aflacglobal (May 2, 2007)

Abra-Cadabra 

Yes i agree, put the gold in my hands and i will make it disappear.

That is interesting. You never know what you might learn.
I knew i seen it somewhere.

Thanks


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## goldsilverpro (May 2, 2007)

Harold, real gold leaf even weighs less than that. It runs from about 10 gms to 30 grams per 1000 sheets, which are 3-3/8" X 3-3/8". If my math is right, that's about .15 to .45 grains/sheet. Average 23KT leaf is about .23 grains/sheet. The gold doesn't disappear, of course, but when you ball up a sheet in your fingers, you have to look carefully to find the speck of gold that results.

For most of my life, making hand carved, gold leafed, mahogany signs has been my hobby. I haven't made them for about 3 or 4 years but, since moving back to the quiet life of my home town in rural Missouri, I will set up on my deck to do it in a week or two. Been waiting for the warm weather. I still have 4 or 5 packs of 23.5KT leaf around here somewhere. That's enough for 2 or 3, 3'X4' signs. The last commercial sign I made was for a legal medical marijuana club in California. It has a big, 3D, carved pot leaf with a red cross in the middle of it. It says, "Don't Panic. It's Organic."

None of my signs are on the net, but here's a lady, whose signs look very similar to mine. Click the signs to enlarge and you can see the gold better.

http://www.customhandcarvedsigns.com/commercial.html


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## aflacglobal (May 2, 2007)

The last commercial sign I made was for a legal medical marijuana club in California. It has a big, 3D, carved pot leaf with a red cross in the middle of it. It says, "Don't Panic. It's Organic :shock: 


If you can't mine it you have to grow it
puff, puff ,give

 

Ralph


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## fixinator (May 3, 2007)

Noxx said:


> But you don't have blasting caps !



HEHEHE, this is the blasting cap! Just add the glycerin to the AR and call the bomb squad.


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