Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
Happy Dyngus day.
Formaldehyde is both a toxic and useful compound. Unfortunately, it's a gas, so it's tough to move around. Typically, you get it as a solution in water - with some methanol to keep it from polymerizing into "paraformaldehyde," which is the other major way to get it. Both are a pain - one has water, which is poison for a lot of reactions, and one acts like brick dust - it won't dissolve in anything.
Trioxane is the third way - it's well-behaved and soluble. Hooray trioxane!
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This was also commonly used in the military for heating food and liquids. They would issue these, you put them under a canteen cup, set a match to them and the light up for about 5-10 minutes. They were called 'heat tabs', I didn't really see them that often when I was in (1996-2004) and some websites have mentioned health problems when used without adequate ventilation, so I don't think they're used much anymore.
Posted by: Chris Singleton | April 14, 2008 11:31 AM