Sodium podium

I think it's time to acknowledge the power of sodium metal. This is one cool element. I dare say it's a little promiscuous. It'll give up that electron to anyone who wants it! Yes, today we had a sodium fire. It was not the first. This lab has seen many a sodium fire. Last year I had to play fire fighter and put one out in the sink behind my bench. That was quite scary, as the waste non-Cl solvent container nearly caught on fire. Lucky it had just been emptied.

Today we were getting rid of some old Na noodles that were left in the bottom of a THF bottle. On inspection by a reliable post doc, it appeared that the noodles were no longer active. So this morning, we tipped them out into a plastic bowl. All was fine until a small tuft of smoke appeared. As we all lent over the top of the bowl to inspect the situation, the whole thing burst into flames. My guess is that that sodium wasn't dead after all! It was just hiding under a layer of NaOH. Sneaky. We all pottered around trying to find something to smother the flame with. We settled on a lab book, but this was too small to cover the whole bowl. By this stage, the flames had burnt several holes in the bottom of the bowl. In the end it just ran out of puff and burnt out. The sodium metal really taught that plastic bowl a lesson.



Here's a before and after shot.



And of course, it's now stuck to the vent.



Sodium is one reactive metal. If you don't watch yourself you might lose a head or two. I almost had some eyebrow singe action today. If it wasn't for my super sharp reflexes, I may be a few eyebrows short.

Bunsen