What Happens if You Put Sodium on Ice? Does it Still Explode?

okay today I'm going to be showing you what happens when you drop sodium in ice so first I'm going to be trying regular ice from my freezer and then I'm going to be trying it with ice that I've super cooled with liquid nitrogen so why do I think the reaction is going to be different between those two so when you take some ice from your refrigerator you can see that the ice is kind of just covered with water it starts to melt and you can see the liquid water on top of it but isit in your freezer looks pretty solid but actually even at your freezer temperatures there's a microscopic layer of liquid water on top of it and the reason there's a little tiny microscopic layer of water on top of ice even it really cold temperatures is because there's always some impurity there's always some dust or even ions like sodium ions or calcium that always keeps a little bit of the water in the liquid state and because salt water freezes at a much lower temperature than regular pure water even it pretty cold temperatures it keeps it so there's a very thin layer of salt water on top of regular ice and in order for sodium to react with ice it needs to react with liquid water and so I'm guessing that when I put the sodium on regular ice that very thin microscopic layer will be able to react with the sodium and then it will get hot and it will melt more of the sodium which will melt more of the ice and it will create this chain reaction that will eventually explode but I'm hypothesizing that if I put liquid nitrogen on the ice I will get it cold enough that I'll be able to freeze any even salt layer on top of it any salt water or impurity water on top of it it'll be so cold that everything will be a pure solid and the sodium won't be able to react with the water because they're both in the solid state and they can't mix together and also because it's in the solid state the sodium won't be able to react with the hydroxide ion that is regularly in liquid water so I'm guessing that it won't be able to react but there's only one way to find out so first we'll do regular ice from my freezer and then we'll do liquid nitrogen cooled ice ok here we go 3 2 1 okay you want to know why I had my blast shield up here cuz of this stuff so these are spots of molten sodium that we're flying through the air you definitely don't want to get hit by molten sodium up on here everywhere see what happens when they get it wet a little well whoa oh gosh okay so I'm showing you how dangerous molten sodium would be I just got burned by molten sodium okay now let's see what happens when we cover it with liquid nitrogen okay that's our sodium in there so I have to keep putting on liquid nitrogen because relative to the ice the ice is burning hot and so it keeps evaporating the liquid nitrogen but it's getting colder and colder and colder each time so we've got to get it down to the temperature of the liquid nitrogen to make sure there's no layer of liquid water on top of the ice okay so the ice and the sodium is now at the temperature of liquid nitrogen no reaction okay so you can see that when I'm touching it to the bare ice on top here there's no reaction whatsoever that's because now there's no layer liquid water on top of it and if there's no liquid water and if there's no liquid water then the sodium cannot react so you can see there's plenty of oxygen for the hydrogen to ignite with but it's just too cold and the height not even the hydrogen isn't reacting but it's not even melting the ice which means the sodium isn't even reacting with the water so sodium plus water does not always equal a reaction it has to be liquid water look at that no reaction whatsoever I can just set the sodium on there nothing's happening but let's see what happens when I put this really cold sodium in warm water 3 2 1 well nothing yet Oh there it finally went whoa hey everybody I'd like to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes and design business technology and more so go check it out click the link in my description to get the Premium Subscription for free for 2 months which is an awesome deal so the Premium Membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes and must know topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and do the work that you love so I'm currently taking several courses right now on Skillshare one of them that I'm interested in is fundamentals of photography I'm learning a lot from this one I'm also taking several different courses on e-commerce and business creativity social branding Skillshare is also a more affordable option than most learning platforms out there it has an annual subscription less than $10 a month so check out Skillshare the first 500 people that click the link in my description will get their first two months free hey everyone thanks for watching another episode I hope you liked it hope you enjoyed it if you have any comments or questions let me know in the comments section if you're not subscribed yet hit the subscribe button and hit the bell to be notified with my latest videos out and head over to the action lab comm in order to get your very first action lab subscription box so you can do the same type of experiments you see me do on my channel and thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: The Action Lab

Views: 11,448,896

Keywords: the action lab, sodium, explode, sodium in water, sodium metal, flush sodium, grant thompson, toilet flush, the king of random, science demonstration, liquid nitrogen, vacuum chamber, venus fly trap, iron man, action lab, hydraulic press, stretch armstrong, brightest flashlight, blackest black, mad science, science experiment, black 2.0, foil ball, ice, water ice, liquid nitrogen on ice, freezing ice, blackest black vs flashlight, black 2.0 paint

Id: 7Zx_HWZEBwI

Length: 7min 20sec (440 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/betelgeux]

Lab safety gear:

• t-shirt
• cargo shorts
• sneakers
• cold proof latex gloves
• residential garage/fume hood

[u/kinpopdj]

blast shield

Folding table

[u/Dishevel]

The voice makes me want to punch myself in the face hard enough that I am knocked out and do not have to hear it anymore.

[u/Mezmorizor]

Blatant only half thinking about safety issues aside, this is a surprisingly good science youtube video. The experiment is actually teaching you something about phases, surface effect, and their importance in chemical reactions. Way more educational than anything channels like The King of Random do anyway.

[u/goldenroman]

Lack of safety aside, this guy covers some interesting stuff I haven’t seen anywhere else on YouTube, but there’s never been a video I could watch without skipping because he draws everythingg ooouuttt. I mean, that was the longest 3......2............1........... I’ve ever heard. Just a small example.

[u/pwnzerblah]

Well that was deflating