Sodium + Private Lake = Fun

travisbean writes "This should be enough to pique your interest. Add to the story that the guy has his own pond and I think we can all see where this is going... 'The first step was the procurement, through eBay, of three and half pounds of solid sodium metal for about a hundred dollars. This is a decent price for a small quantity like this. Small being a relative term: It's used by the ton in industry, but anything more than a few grams is a dangerous quantity if found in your home. Three and a half pounds is enough, for example, to blow your home to bits under the right conditions.'"

Comments

Re:Funny story from Chemistry lecture...

[standards]

Wow, sounds like a great way to mistakenly kill someone.

She must be real fucking proud.

Faculty don't live in the real world. She's a great example, thanks for helping my cause! I hope her car rusted.

Re:Lithium is more fun.

[Archon-X]

Sounds like my dad.. He used to be a sheet metal worker, and in his lunch hours roll carbite into bread and feed it to pigeons [carbite and water are used to make acetelyne]

they used to fly into the trees and explode a short while later

Re:Why is this cool?

[Inda]

Do you have the slightest idea what the effects of 3 pounds of sodium would be on 23,550 cubic feet of water would be?

To be totally honest with you: I have no idea. I don't even have the slightest idea. Guess that makes me stupid too.

Hint: A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs.

Nope. Still no idea, although I expect this is a very good hint.

What a strange set of numbers. How on earth do you remember that? How on earth can you possibly get your head around the calculations?

It's times like this I'm glad I'm stupid and use the metric system.