Kevlar-suit-wearing synthetic chemists and the art of nomenclature.

Some interesting nitrogen-based chemistry featured in the chemical blogosphere in 2012. Several bloggers commented on a peculiar (and perhaps somewhat terrifying) compound containing 10 nitrogens in a row, reported in Inorganic Chemistry. David Perrey at Chemical Space wrote, “The graphical abstract tells the story eloquently: the structure with a back-drop of broken lab equipment,” and muses “inadvertent explosions is a lovely expression” (http://go.nature.com/JM4lHc).

A picture of a Klapötke group member working with these materials was posted on the blog Reactions from Last Night (http://go.nature.com/Du1TBI) — “notice the full Kevlar suit he's wearing” notes the caption! There are strict rules about who can do what in the group; undergraduates don't handle explosives, masters students only work with known compounds, and PhD students are the ones who “make and characterize anything novel”.

At the other extreme, in a post on 'Handheld chemistry' (http://go.nature.com/SG8zdq) over at The Culture of Chemistry, Michelle Francl-Donnay advises the reader to “wash those hands” if you are going to repeat an experiment described in a 1937 chemistry-kit manual for “making ammonia in your hand,” by mixing calcium oxide and ammonium chloride with your fingers. Francl-Donnay further admits to “using Hess' law for fun,” but follows with a serious calculation on the heat of formation for the reaction: “–635 kJ [...] for about a tablespoon of material,” to be precise.

And finally, at The Heterocyclist blog, dipolar-cycloaddition veteran Will Pearson ponders over an apparent mix-up between nitrogen imines and ylides (http://go.nature.com/Kzrruf) in the title of a paper in Angewandte Chemie International Edition and throws out a “What am I missing here?” Judging by the lack of objectors so far — nothing.