uncoolcentral's Journal: Ask slashdot about *this* explosion

I correspond with a guy named Der Voron. Pretty neat, eh? He's written a couple of books about alien encounters and intervention, etc. Interesting fella. He recently sent me this (below) and asked me to find an "answer" to it. Not sure what that means exactly, but I know that he is willing to subject himself to a, "helmet with electrodes." I'll pay a buck to see that.

Strange occurrence
By Der Voron

I am recalling an unexplainable occurrence that happened to me in my youth, sometime around 1990. I was very curious, and one of my passions was chemistry. I tried to electrolyze a water solution of sodium chloride (plain salt), and received some amount of chlorine.

I decided to move further to conduct an experiment with fluorine, electrolyzing a water solution of sodium fluoride in a glass container. I knew I was not going to get fluorine in that way because of its chemical properties; but I wanted to see how it reacted with water. Indeed, I could see that. Suddenly, the container exploded right before my eyes! I was not injured by the glass fragments, but was unable to find any, though I diligently tried to find them.

There is nothing wondrous that the container exploded. During the electrolysis, hydrogen from the cathode was accumulating in the water and partially in the air, and active oxidants like ozone and oxygen fluorides from the anode were accumulating likewise:

2NaF (sodium fluoride) = (electrolysis) 2Na + F2
2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2 (hydrogen)
F2 + H2O -> HF + OF2 (oxygen fluoride) + O2F2 (another kind of oxygen fluoride) + O3 (ozone) + O (atomic oxygen) + H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) [different reaction products]

The explosion was evidently caused by reaction between hydrogen (a part of which was partially dissolved in the water and another part leaving it from water surface) and ozone, oxygen fluorides, hydrogen peroxide, and atomic oxygen also partially dissolved in the water and leaving it from the surface; that is, oxidants solved in the water reacted with the hydrogen solved in the water, and oxidants that left the water from the surface reacted with hydrogen which was also leaving the water from the surface.

Nothing wondrous; the wondrous is that there was no injury, though the explosion happened right before my face, and no fragments of the container were found after that. I swear by God that this is the absolute truth. If someone doubts my words, I don't mind to be checked with lie detectors, such as conventional lie detector or helmet with electrodes.