Moment of zen
When you toss a pound of sodium into a river:
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
 |
|
Find Local
|
Categories
- ATF (769)
- Death Match (10)
- Eminent Domain (225)
- In the bag (9)
- Notes to Junior (546)
- Poker (74)
- Recipes (142)
- Shotgun Noob (11)
- The Airing of Grievances (19)
- uncategorized (47,725)
May 12th, 2016 at 7:02 pm
That’s nothing. Try this one out: 30,000 lbs of WW2 surplus sodium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7mTCMvpEM
May 12th, 2016 at 8:22 pm
As dumb as that was, I’ve always wanted to do that.
This video does not end that desire.
May 13th, 2016 at 7:18 am
“We gonna talk, or we gonna fish?”
May 13th, 2016 at 9:06 am
The approved disposal method at the Frankfort Arsenal until it started skipping towards the fuel dock.
Lithium would do the same thing.
May 13th, 2016 at 11:26 am
As a chemist, my interest was piqued by the WWII surplus sodium. A quick read suggests that such a large amount of sodium might be left over from government programs using sodium silicates, including construction (anti-porosity cement coatings or additives), packaging (glue for making corrugated cardboard), shipping (drying agents), even the loading of paper cartridges like from the 1860s. HC Brown used sodium in his wartime work with boron and enantiomeric synthesis, but would not have needed quite so much.
That the gov/mil ended up holding so much raw sodium after the wartime need for it was over was likely just an artifact of procurement policies, that is, “Get it while the getting is good, we might need a lot of it.”
That no commercial shipper would transport it in bulk to industrial buyers is not surprising, but I did see some trucks in that video, so if they really wanted to sell it they could have, with the seller providing transport. At worst they could have cut the stuff up into 1 pound lots, packaged it safely, and shipped it in safety, like they do today.
I have had the pleasure of disposing of excess stockroom sodium in my university’s pond, well after midnight with friends. And I also had the dubious distinction of being the only member of my graduating class to set a sink on fire, when I mistakenly emptied a beaker of what I thought was just hexane into a sink after a day of labwork, not noticing the slivers of NA my lab partner left unused.