Azoimide Azoimide is a clear, colorless, mobile liquid, which boils without decomposition at 37o. It is endowed with the same intolerable odor as the solution. Its most characteristic property, however, is its frightful explodes in a most erratic manner-- sometimes without, the least apparent provocation at the ordinary temperature. Its distillation is an operation attended by great danger. Prof. Curtius and his assistant have succeeded, as above described, in isolating it and determining its boiling point several times; but upon other occasions, under apparently the same conditions, the experiment has ended with a disastrous explosion. When suddenly heated or touched with a hot body, it always explodes. The explosion is accompanied by an intensely vivid blue flame. The damage wrought by the explosion of very minute quantities is most surprising. The thousandth part of a gramme, placed upon an iron plate and touched by a hot glass rod, is sufficient to produce a loud detonation, and considerably distort the iron plate. The twentieth part of a gramme was found sufficient to completely pulverize Hofmann "density" apparatus, when an attempt was made to determine it vapor density in the Torricellian vacuum at the ordinary temperature. Upon another occasion, seven-tenths of a gramme, contained in a closed glass tube, upon removal from the freezing mixture in which it had been immersed exploded with such an immense force as to shatter every piece of glass apparatus in the laboratory. It was upon this occasion that Prof. Curtius's assistant [Dr. Radenhausen] was so seriously injured as to cause the temporary abandonment of the work. The aqueous solution is almost as explosive as the anhydrous liquid, the explosion of two cubic centimeters of a 27 per cent. solution upon one occasion shattering the glass tube into dust so fine that Prof. Curtius, who was attempting to seal it, escaped uninjured. Azomide, N3H -- The New Sodium Salt - The Most Highly Explosive Substance Known Scientific American Supplement, No. 836 January 9, 1892