Fun with chemistry (1)

When I was a lad, someone showed me how easy it was to make the explosive nitrogen triiodide by adding iodine to an aqueous solution of ammonia. The nice thing about this stuff is that it's perfectly safe when wet but readily explodes when dry, even if touched gently. It's also not particularly dangerous. I used to love applying the wet stuff to the concrete paths at home and watching the family jump out of their skins when they walked on it.

We made some at school one evening. After filtering the stuff to remove most of the water we dumped the filter papers in the waste paper bin, completely overlooking these would dry out overnight. When the cleaner came to empty the bin next morning the whole lot exploded enveloping her in a purple iodine cloud. We should have been soundly punished for that, but for some reason were not. We probably blamed it on someone else.