Nitrogen tri-iodide is easy to make, but ridiculously unstable. It's the sort of thing that some teenagers 'discover' that if one suspects yours might, best demonstrated by an adult to put them off.
My mate at school wreaked his bedroom carpet. He left a saucer of the liquid drying on his windowsill and as it dried, something set a little bit off. Probably a very minor explosion, but enough to deposit little portions of the nearly dry stuff on the carpet. By the time he got home, they were dry and on walking into his room, several of them went off and blew holes in the carpet. He tried to pick up the rest with a stick and a little shovel, but the moment anything got near, another explosion took place...
My brother 'borrowed' my ingredients (880 ammonia and iodine crystals) and made some in the utility room. A little bit went off, and he was deaf for several hours!
I was given the job of disposing of the rest of his nitrogen tri-iodide by my parents. But I'm probably the most hair-raising safety rep the BBC has ever had (I'm not really dangerous, it just looks that way...).
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