Alkali metals and water

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2007-08-30 12:35am

This video came up in group meeting because my lab has just purchased about 5 times the amount of rubidium as they use in the video.

Of course, hopefully we'll keep ours from getting wet.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2007-08-30 12:46am

Excellent, I love the Hamster.

In tenth grade IB chemistry, my teacher showed us this with potassium, the rationale being that we had never seen such a powerful one before. A tiny pellet went into a large amount of water, and basically exploded.

EDIT: And Hammond forgot to mention that francium is illegal because it's kind of radioactive.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2007-08-30 01:36am

We should make Ce-tipped torpedos. Just blow open it's container upon reaching the target with a small amount of HE, let the Ce contact the water and Ka-blammo, and doooon't give me any guff about it being unstable and blah blah blah. I want explosions, I don't care WHERE it happens, necessarily.

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2007-08-30 07:20am

Isn't that the show that got them in trouble because it was faked? The metals didn't blow up the tub, so they used explosives to get a nice shot.