Those being fire, health, reactivity, and special.
With such a creative allusionary point out too. Mad props to Cleveland’s main mad scientist.
I’m flattered, but I’m not even a pro. My home city hosts at least two professional mad scientists (one at Cleveland State University, one at the Great Lakes Science Center).
Plus a bunch of sane scientists, of course.
It’s not exactly earth, air, fire, and water, but it’s not that far off.
Anything that can set water on fire, in opposition to the God-given nature of the four classical elements, must clearly be the work of the Devil.
When did we start talking about ClF3? In addition to water, it’s also hypergolic with asbestos and sand.
User error. Reboot.
“Chlorine Trifluoride.”
Just the name screams “You’re not allowed to do that!”
Sorta like a 1 million pound-force spring being held compressed by a badly bulging 1 million pound-force container and an overwrap of wet tissue paper.
You just know that force wants to get out and rampage if anything nicks the tissue.
Apparently, some truly mad scientists have made chlorine pentafluoride.
That stuff sounds fun.
“At room temperature it reacts readily with all elements (including otherwise “inert” elements like platinum and gold) except noble gases, nitrogen, oxygen and fluorine.”
Fun quotes from its datasheet:
appears as a colorless gas with a sweet odor
contact with gas or liquefied gas may cause burns, severe injury and/or frostbite.
So, at least it’s smells nice before it poisons, freezes, and burns you up.
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Something that won’t react with oxygen or fluorine clearly has quite enough of it stuffed in there already.
The fluorine is too busy reacting with everything else. Or maybe it’s professional courtesy, like the way the zombies never attack each other.
The oxygen was chagrined to be told it wasn’t tough enough to join that fight club.
All I have to say is,
FOOF!
Sounds like something you won’t work with.
Certainly something Derek Lowe won’t work with.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride
But he also refuses to have anything to do with ClF3 either.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time
Sounds like a difference of degree, not kind, and not much of a degree either.