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I saw that this morning, and it cracked me up. Then I got real about it, which spoiled the fun.

If mainstream media were at all functional, this story would be splashed everywhere, and every newsreader would be in on the joke, sharing it with their audience, but that's never going to happen.

Instead, the story will go nowhere, I fear, and the same 'no chemicals' crap will keep on going.

(Sadly, if David Letterman or Jay Leno announced this story, their audience wouldn't get it.)

Phosphorus pentoxide and potassium oxide? What is the "natural", "organic" source for such water-sensitive things?

So, vacuum should be OK? Right?

So if I could get my hands on a few kg of neutronium, would that count?

-mark.

"100% chemical-free material"

The best I can offer is '100% free' chemical material.

But the shipping & handling costs are enormous!

Easy. As long as the container can contain chemicals.

I can bring them some nice photon gas, or, with some difficulty, a splendid, if short lived, pair plasma.

What about a properly prepared vacuum tube? The contents of the tube would be 100% chemical free, almost. Certainly >99% chemical free, but with a million pounds on the line, I doubt they would be willing to budge on the 100% requirement.

helium or some other noble gas: no covalent or ionic bonds in there. this might satisfy organic chemists. for the physical chemists, make it at 25 degrees C and 1013.25 millibars.

I suppose a fragment of Neutron star material would count. Handling may break some Health and Safety regulations, though, as would a small black hole.

A quark-gluon plasma would probably fit the bill as well, but again containment for longer than Plank timescales may prove tricky.

Sadly some people here can't see the intelligence behind Letterman's clown act.

Can you call a 100% vacuum a material though?

Here's another similar incident of preying on public chemophobia and ignorance, that I've now seen on two separate signs in my city. Dry cleaners with huge signs in their windows stating that their processes use "100% Organic Solvents"

Well, I'm certainly not alone in proposing the handy "box o' vacuumTM"... Suppose the fertilizer manufactureres simply present the contents of their heads, instead? Certainly seems as though they could satisfy the requirements.

Hilarious! I love it!

who could place in my hands any material I consider 100% chemical free

Material Vacuum does not qualify, the Periodic Table is excluded (chemical elements). Neutronium is expensive to transport, jellium requires background countercharge, James L. Dye's electrides require a chemical matrix. Molecular sieves and hyper-empty metal-organic frameworks are volume (potentially good) nanodispersed in chemical matrices (definitely bad).

Photons are stable non-chemical material entities. Photons have momentum, right? Stuff! Ask for his palm and shine a flashlight upon it.

Muonium should definitely fit the bill.

Also, it has a half-life long enough to fly through his arms satisfying the 'place in my hands' condition.

I was about to suggest the vacuum box, as well. ^^ Though, the box itself would be made of chemicals... hrm. Why not just toss the guy into the vacuum? :D

I seriously giggled when I saw that, though. It reminded me of an activity in Bio I, where the teacher said, "In these phials is a chemical..." And I thought, "Water is a chemical..." and that's what it turned out to be. :D

Several years ago at an ACS meeting in New Orleans I was disturbed to find an ad for "chemical free beer". Ugh.

Uncle Al: Alas, I think that anyone savvy enough to make this bet would claim that the photons were all being reflected or absorbed and converted to heat, and therefore were not "in [the bettor's] hands." But then again, I'm a lawyer who pretends to be a scientist (or perhaps the other way around, some days), so what do I know?

Jita: In middle school I had a science teacher who called on us to identify a set of unknown liquids (by measuring boiling and freezing points and the like), assigning each to one group of class members. He said that we couldn't go by color, as he had put a "reagent" in them. I was somewhat puzzled, as I knew what the word meant. In any event, the outcome was the same as in your case: they were all water.

Vegetable oil extraction plant in Mexico City had a funny mishap few years ago - a lot of their solvent run off, got into sewers, which eventually ignited and blew manholes, fires shooting up for miles.

Greenpeace used this as an example of corporate cover-up: Whereas the factory announcement was that the escaped substance was "light gasoline", their independend investigation later uncovered that it actually was a highly explosive, hazardous substance known as hexane.

HAHAHA I love the "100% organic" solvents sign at the dry cleaners. I wonder if the dry cleaner realizes how misleading that is, or if they are just as ignorant.

It's like "lite" olive oil...it has the same amount of fat per tablespoon, just a "lite" taste. You wouldn't believe how many people I've talked to who don't understand this concept.

There are still some "chemical free" sunblocks/sunscreens - nano-sized TiO2. Obviously the liquid base must be chemical free too.

VN,

I think/hope it's a joke. All I know is that if I'm ever in the tuna canning business, I'm advertising that my fish contains "wholesome organic mercury compounds".