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Originally posted by thesaint
Surely this is wrong airing this on TV if these metals are readily available to anyone...
Originally posted by gfad
Did you go to school?
When I was there these reactions were shown to everyone.
The more important point of my post is to point out that the Guardian newspaper in the UK recently exposed the fact that Brainiac fakes all its explosions! This all stemmed from the very experiment that you are describing, when it was revealed that infact when they treid the experiment the metal was so dense it just sank to the bottom o the bath and didnt explode. To make the show more exciting they simply placed some conventional explosives on the bathtub. When pressed a Sky spokeserson revealed that whenever you see anything on Brainiac that could be dangerous it has actually been faked for safety reasons.
I find this a huge disappointment and a terrible example of popular science at its worst.
Guardian Bad Science column
[edit on 27/7/06 by gfad]
Originally posted by jlc163
dry ice
water
plastic bottle
noisy as all get out
suprised no one's tried it in thin glass bottles.
Originally posted by apc
Dangerous, illegal, and if youre lucky it wont burst into flames in your face. Chlorine is highly reactive... the gas is the least of your concerns when messing with it. If your hands are moist when handling the granules it will burn your flesh off.
Originally posted by thesaint
Err yes i went to school and was never shown this maybe my school didnt trust us with that kind of knowledge. I must also point out i was also an explosive and demolitions pioneer in the British Army for 6 years and was never made aware of the reactions of these metals with water
Schools have changed a lot since i went to school so maybe it would be normal now. Most we ever did was make plastic.
Originally posted by thesaint
Today i was shocked by a TV program that decided to show the results of adding Alkaline metals to water to see there explosive results. Now 2 of these metals literally blew a bath tub to smithereens with a devastating effect and they only used a few grammes of each metal. I thought this was shocking having not known of this reaction.
Originally posted by gfad
Originally posted by thesaint
Err yes i went to school and was never shown this maybe my school didnt trust us with that kind of knowledge. I must also point out i was also an explosive and demolitions pioneer in the British Army for 6 years and was never made aware of the reactions of these metals with water
Schools have changed a lot since i went to school so maybe it would be normal now. Most we ever did was make plastic.
A mix of alkali metals with water is a very typical and easy to understand reaction.
2 X + 2 H2O ==> 2 XOH + H2
As you can see from the reaction above (where X = an group 1 metal) Hydrogen gas is formed which in a fast reaction can create mild explosive effects.
As the reactivity of the elements in group 1 increases as you go down the group, Lithium doesnt react much, Sodium fizzes round a bath of water and Potassium fizzes around a bath of water (faster than sodium) with a purple flame. These reactions are normally shown in pre-GCSE chemistry lessons.
You probably werent aware of these as an explosives expert as they dont really explode. I do find it worrying though that an explosives expert doesnt know of the most basic chemical reactions!
Originally posted by jlc163
dry ice
water
plastic bottle
noisy as all get out
suprised no one's tried it in thin glass bottles.