Science desk
< August 24	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 26 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 25

NFPA 704 ("Fire Diamond"): Is there any material that is a 3-4 in the yellow, but 0-1 in the red and blue?

When staring at a fire diamond, it occured to me that while it's easy to think of materials which might be high-blue (health) but not red (flammable) or yellow (unstable) - cyanide and chlorine, for instance - and not too difficult to think of at least one that's high-red but not blue or yellow (gasoline - I'm sure there's others), I couldn't really think of anything that would be highly reactive, but not either flammable or a health concern. Sodium was the closest I could think of, but according to the NOAA ([1]), it's actually more of a health/flammability risk than an instability risk, because its behavior versus water is noted in the white. Is there anything that comes to anyone's mind that would complete the rock-paper-scissors? DepotBinger (talk) 01:49, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

FEMA lists potassium permanganate as "0-0-3 OX", but our article has different values. Ammonium nitrate is "1-0-3 OX". DMacks (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hah! I had actually quickly considered ammonium nitrate, but immediately ruled it out ("oh, wait, Texas City, it's probably pretty flammable" - completely blanking on the fact that, of course, most of that damage was caused by the explosion dispersing various objects which were already on fire, duh). Thanks for completing the cycle, looks like I'll be sleeping easy tonight! DepotBinger (talk) 03:23, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! Unless there's ANFO under your pillow or something. DMacks (talk) 03:33, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DepotBingerGiven the uniqueness of the fields in template:chemobox used to designate the values in the various parts of the fire diamond: NFPA-H, NFPA-F and NFPA-R, you might be able to search for the combos you want just based on searches. For example, if you wanted something where the Red was 1, Blue was 2 and Yellow was 4, you could search for insource:/NFPA-F *= *1/ insource:/NFPA-H *= *2/ insource:/NFPA-R *= *4/ which returns three entries: TNT, Ethylene glycol dinitrate, and Guanidine nitrate.

For your original request which allowed for 3-4 in the unstable and 0-1 in the others, I used insource:/NFPA-F *= *[01]/ insource:/NFPA-H *= *[01]/ insource:/NFPA-R *= *[34]/ And that returned seven mainspace articles. I'd list them, but I believe typing them all in single sentence is a magical spell that would cause an ATF agent to show up at your door. :)

I found my results by googling NFPA-704 "0-0-4" and the like. DMacks (talk) 19:06, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Spoilsport. :)Naraht (talk) 21:04, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DMacks at your service: sports spoiled, parties pooped, baby seals clubbed. Ask me about this week's two-for-one pooping special. DMacks (talk) 18:48, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think I saw your ad in the last chapter of Heinlein's The Number of the Beast.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]