fusion121

picric acid and picrates

Why would you ever mix anything with picric acid? that stuff is seriously unpleasant.

I did some research into the topic a while back, south hampton university apprently did an optional module within their chemistry degree that studied pyrothecnic chemistry . To be honest however doing an MSci in chemistry is going to teach you all the science you need to know, I'm in my second year doing chemistry and you wouldn't beleive some of the dangerous stuff that lecturers like to embelish their lectures with.

Someone was selling a vial of ceasium of on ebay a while back, mind you you'd never actually be able to get it into water or vinegar, moisture in the air causes it to spontaneously inflame(pretty explosively).

Boric acid B(OH)3 is an incredibly weak acid, its pK value and hence its pH is about 9.25, it doesn't act as a classical bronstead acid as it will not donate H+ ions rather it acts as an acceptor for OH- ions and hence makes a good buffer when you want to ensure that your conditions are almost exactly pH 7. I can't find the data to work out the pH of citric acid but the fact is a tri-carboxylic acid means it will proably be a much stronger acid then boric acid and neutilisation will take place via H+ reactions.

the chlorate (CLO3-) anion is a better oxidising agent then the nitrate (NO3-) this accounts for the increase the reate of reaction. The chemsitry behind this is due to the fact that, although with the nitrate you have the large entropic driving force of the formation of the nitorgen triple bond, nitrogen oxygen bonds are actually relatively stable due to efficient molecular orbital interaction between the 2p electron orbitals of nitorgen and the 2p electron orbitals of oxygen (the nitrate ion is also further stabalised by resonace). With the chlorate anion however the Cl-O bond is not particularly strong, due to less effiecent overlap of 3p and 2p electron orbitals furthermore the stabalisation due to resonace is less. Baciaclly the difference arises due to the relative strengths of the N-O and CL-O bond lengths the N-O length is 1.24 angstroms whereas the CL-O bondlength is about 1.7 angstroms. The weaker Cl-O bond is more suseptable to cleavage by accepting electron pairs and hence is the more powerful oxidising agent.