Well it's not probably absolutely illegal, just that sodium is recommended.

that might be true we did use sodium as well but we also used potassium as for ceasium we had to watch a video for that one, how i would love to get hold of 10g of ceasium 1g would do

Haha That reminds me of a story my freshmen science teacher told me. This one kid stole some Sodium from a school lab and rapped it in a paper towl. He stuck it in his front pocket and went to lunch. While at lunch he somehow spilled a coke on himself and the sodium reacted instantly burning his leg and wang.

"how i would love to get hold of 10g of ceasium"

 

Who wouldn't like 10g of a devastatingly dangerous and highly explosive element that can be ionized by even visible light (which is quite an achievement).

"He stuck it in his front pocket and went to lunch. While at lunch he somehow spilled a coke on himself and the sodium reacted instantly burning his leg and wang."

 

What is it with people (especially men) putting dangerous chemicals in their freaking front pockets! A perfect way to achieve the Darwin Award.

i have seen 1g of ceasium thrown into a bath (this was on brainiac) the explosive equivelence is that of a water mine going off. the bath was torn apart it was great to watch but i dont think i would like to keep a 1g batch near where i sleep and a 10g batch where i sleep i wouldnt be able to sleep i would be very nervous but it still would be fun to own some

I've got a 5-10 gram ampoule of cesium. I can't really remember just how much it is. It's neat stuff. Literally liquid gold.

yeah, literally, 5-10 grams would set you back 500-1000 bucks. also, that story of the kid putting it in his pocket has to be false. cesium reacts with air, and therefore it would've started burning as soon as it was taken out of a neutral atmosphere. it would've burned his skin, as it also reacts with skin, it would've lit the paper towel on fire, and it would've lit him on fire long before he reached the lunch room.

^Too bad Molotoz said sodium though, not cesium.

In my Bio class this year, my teacher was giving a lecture and had a can of potassium on his desk (he teaches chemistry too). He asked us if we had ever seen it put in water, and some hadn't, so he took out a couple pieces and put them it water and we watched it burn (cool purple flame). A nice little break from the lecture.

uhh, silencer, even still, it reacts with air, and it would've created flame, just not as intensely as cesium. have you ever dealt with sodium? when you take it out of its stable atmosphere, it starts smoking after a couple seconds, then it starts flaming like a really small flare. pour water on it and it will fizzle for about a second and then BANG, and a huge flash from the hydrogen. sodium in your pocket would light you on fire.

No it won't. I've had ounces of sodium sitting out in the open air and all they did was corrode. No heat evolution at all. You'd have to have sodium sitting out in a sauna like atmosphere for it to start smoking and catch fire. If there's enough moisture in the air potassium may spontaneously ignite, but even that you can leave out in the open and just have to deal with it corroding and wasting away. It's rubidium and cesium that will start to smoke and ignite when exposed to normal atmospheric conditions.

jdurg, in my college chem class we took sodium out of oil and put it on a desk. first what happened was it started smoking, white smoke, not huge quantities, but like a cigarette. then i touched it and it was hot. after that it started sparking little flames and we poured water on it and watched the spark show. this is my experience with sodium. it definately was not rubidium, and i doubt the professor would've thrown a 100 dollar piece of cesium onto a desk to watch it explode.

your sodium had peroxide and superoxide in it then

what exactly is superoxide?

in this case, it is NaO2

Yeah. It really sounds like the sodium was contaminated with peroxides or superoxides. Those compounds are likely to decompose and accellerate the sodium's reaction with air. If it was a moist day then there would have been sufficient moisture in the air to help accellerate the decomposition. Under normal conditions, sodium will not spontaneously ignite. So there must have been some other contaminations in there.

i wouldnt say decompose...i'd think that the peroxides/superoxides just passed their oxygen on to the sodium

Hmm... Is a superoxide always a molecule where an O-O pair's both O's share a single other atom?

yes

Alrighty then. Is it more unstable than a peroxide bond?

Yes. (At least I believe so). In a peroxide bond, you have Something-O-O-SomethingElse. So there is a little more space for the oxygen atoms to exist. In a superoxide, you have Something-O-O-SameSomething, so depending on what that Something is, the bond angle and hence tension on the oxygen atoms is pretty tight. Therefore, the compound is more likely to decompose, and fairly violently too if given a chance. With the alkali metals, the existance of superoxides increases as you move further down the group since the atoms of the metals increase in size. Sodium can form superoxides, I think, but only with great difficulty. Potassium is able to form superoxides more easily, and rubidium/cesium readily form superoxides.

O-O dimetric are far more unstable than the Trimetric versions too, but the dimers release much less energy on breaking.

 

again, it`s the typical tradeoffs for any energetic compound, the more energy released, the more stable they tend to be

Uhhuh. CsO2 sounds like something I don't want to even look at.

sure ya do!, just not up close! )