Spring RTS Engine

One for the Hammond / big explodey thing fans... i.e. everyone ^^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqeVEFFzz7E

ungh@ comments that it's fake. Lets just say that in chemistry class I had a very experiment oriented teacher. Sodium metal ftw.

It was funny, once he put a little bit too much in and for a few moments we had fire dripping form the ceiling, blackened and melted the paint. Looking back it was a little freaky, but it was pretty funny at the same time hehehe.

I guess they don't do this stuff in public schools. Truly is a shame, there is nothing like seeing some of the lesser metals (less violatile(sp?)) react with water.

I didn't know there was a show like that around. I'm a bit of a science/chemistry buff (in the very general sense) myself and I really dig stuff like this.

It's kinda funny. People have no problem believing that diet coke and mentos produce a reaction, but can't believe that alkali metals would react with water. That's just dumb.

When we did this at school (inside and with less material of course) it always produced sparks/flames. Why not there or are they too small?

If you dont know this, its only normal that people believe the coke thing more easily because you know similiar stuff happens when you shake the bottle.

Watching again its strange, they say that "after a few seconds the stuff around the Rb dissolves in the water and the Rb can react with the water."
I thought glass was the only material you could safely transport Rb in?

What material can be used to store Rb but dissolves in water? salt?

Ok, Ive done some maths on this and my conclusion would be that either they used more than 2g (less than a pinky-fingernail) or they helped the explosions a bit. My maths could be broken, cause i cba figuring out what temperature the resulting water-vapor would be so i assumed ~500 C.

2g of Cs would equal about 0,015 moles (2/133)

2 Cs + 2 H2O -> H2 + 2CsOH

This means you would get about 0,0075 moles of H2-gas.

2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O + 572 kJ/mol

Using pV=nRT we get V = (0,075 * 8,31 * 773,15)/101300 =~ 0,47 dm3 of gaseous H2O (assuming that the temperature would be around 500 degrees C. Again, I've just picked this number out of my ass so please correct me if im way off)

Of course the water surrounding the actual reaction would be heated enough to boil quickly, but i wouldnt say it would be enough for that kind of explosion.
Keep in mind that this reaction occurs in a fraction of a second, so the effects would be quite dramatic. Not blow the bathtub in half dramatic though.

I am not claiming that these calculations are perfect, please correct me. Im still learning this stuff.

knorke, its stored in oil, to stop the metal reacting with air while its being stored. the water washes it away and hey presto.. ^^

I always loved it when science teachers bought out hte alkali metals at school, we usually manged to egg them on and get them to use more of the stuff then they sould

i miss science T_T

Cabbage wrote:knorke, its stored in oil, to stop the metal reacting with air while its being stored. the water washes it away and hey presto.. ^^

I always loved it when science teachers bought out hte alkali metals at school, we usually manged to egg them on and get them to use more of the stuff then they sould

i miss science T_T

My cheimstry teacher was always easily encouraged.

Ours wasn't, she was sooo strict, we just had to wait until she left the classroom... thing is, she saw the gas tap flame thrower we made from another room and we got busted anyway.
The headteacher was not a happy camper when he found out what we'd been doing. It was worth it though, I melted half my pencil case ^^

Metals wise, my favourite was always magnesium, we went through so much of it in its ribbon form, you can burn through anything with that stuff cos it burns so hot, its crazy!

ahhh what times I had... good old chemistry...