I'm getting tired of LiveJournal, thought I might make a switch, so here it starts. La!
To start, in the vein of Chemical Applaudables, I've been demo-ing with sodium metal for the past two days, trying to develop a good way of presenting it in demonstration format. While the biggest obstacles have been finding a good, safe way to present it to visitors (layer of oil above indicator/water in a tube = neat, but not exciting, like a painfully slow lava lamp [hmm...]; shallow pan to watch it zoom around = dangerous!; giant clear deep tub with lid = excellent!) and trying to present all the information (surprisingly, there's a lot to talk about with this little alkali metal, half of it being, "This is very, VERY dangerous!"), I've been getting it along pretty well and very safely. However, the second sodium demo today left me shaken but relieved: a chunk of sodium approximately the size of a small marble, in the large tub partially filled with water, in the fume hood (heat from sodium + denatured alcohol for dissolving phenolphthalein = lots of cough-inducing vapors), expelled hydrogen gas on fire from the lit wooden splint I had just introduced--standard practice--and zooming around as sodium is wont to do in water. Suddenly, a BANG! louder than most rocket launches, pink streaks all over the inside of the fume hood from the indicator, and the sodium? Nowhere to be seen. Uh oh. Dissolved? Reacted? Exploded? Sucked up the fume hood vent duct? Who knows, but it was gone gone gone. Now we know what not to do with sodium, which is as good, if not better, than knowing what to do with it. My throat is still sore from how tense my body became at the noise.
My version is less dangerous than this:
