Fun with inorganic chemistry.

[randomness]

We did toss a small chunk of sodium metal into water in my high school second year chemistry class at one point--I think it might have been a day when we had a substitute teacher--but unfortunately we had no cesium in the back room.

More videos along these lines available at the Open University site: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=294420

Comments

[nezumiko.livejournal.com]

Also laughing like crazy here. My dad and his best friend (for whom I am named) tells a story of a friend of theirs who, when they were all undergrads at MIT, stole some a big block of sodium from one of the chem labs and threw it into the Charles, to spectacular effect.

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

Sodium is fun stuff. In college chem lab, we took little bits of it, and wrapped foil around it to make boats, and then poked a hole in the back end, and dropped them in water and had races. In high school chem lab, they were less subtle, and just let us blow up a metal trash can with it.

That's not stolen, that's a tradition

[drwex]

the Sodium Drop is a ceremony that happens annually on MIT campus. Was your dad an East Campus resident, perchance?

Re: That's not stolen, that's a tradition

[nezumiko.livejournal.com]

I think they lived in Senior House. They graduated in 1960. Don't know how old the tradition is, but I found an article from The Tech online that attributes multiple Sodium Drop events in the past, not just East Campus. I've tried to Google the history of the Sodium Drop, but to no effect. The story was always told by dad and his friend as if it were an original prank, but I can believe it was tradition.

They also tell a story about someone thermiting a bronze slide rule into the left hand of the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard, but I don't know if that was an idea that was actually carried out, or merely lovingly thought upon.