Explosive!

In this lab (performed on 9-6-11) we got to make an explosive called nitrogen triiodide monoamine and then even better, we got to detonate it! The preparation itself was extremely simple: stir iodine and ammonium hydroxide together and spread the mixture out on filter paper:



 The wet solid is not explosive, so it had to dry before we could do anything with it. Once it dried, we detonated it with a yardstick, and got a good recording of it:



Our favorite part of the detonation was the little puff of red smoke that happens when it explodes. We thought the explosion just made a lot of noise, and that was the only way it released its energy. However, when we looked at our filter paper after the detonation, we saw that it blew a hole right through the three layers of paper that we dried it on!