This is a demonstration video showing some of the characteristics of sodium metal and some of the reactions of sodium metal and sodium based compounds.
This is a demonstration video showing some of the chemical characteristics of sodium metal along with some of the chemical reactions of sodium and sodium based compounds sodium metal is typically stored in the mineral oil a sodium metal would react with the humidity in the atmosphere and unlike most metals sodium is relatively soft so it can be cut with a scalpel as
Shown here you wouldn’t be able to cut a block of iron as easy as this when the sodium metal is cut you can see a shiny metallic surface is exposed the shiny surface created will rapidly tarnish in air due to the humidity and form a dull surface since sodium metal is reactive the first set of experiments were going to perform we’re only going to use a small amount
Of sodium metal the larger pieces of sodium metal we’re going to store back under the mineral oil and to work in an experiment with those later a first chemical reaction we’re going to look at is sodium metal reacting with water we measured the initial ph of the water and found it to be around 6 now we drop in some sodium metal and immediately you can see a reaction
Once all the sodium metal is reacted with measure the ph the liquid again and this time it is alkaline with a ph of 14 this is due to the formation of a solution of sodium hydroxide let’s put a large piece in and light the hydrogen see the characteristic yellow flame of sodium will try an even larger piece towards the end of the video more sodium metal was reacted
With the water to form a strong a solution of sodium hydroxide and now we’re going to have a look at some of the chemical characteristics a sodium hydroxide solution to start with they’re going to be that a small amount of our concentrated sodium hydroxide onto some aluminium foil and you can see a reaction where the sodium hydroxide is reacting to the aluminium
To form aluminium aluminate and hydrogen gas in our next demonstration we’re going to see the chemical reaction between solutions copper sulfate and concentrated sodium hydroxide in this demonstration concentrated the sodium hydroxide solution is going to be petted into the blue copper sulfate solution when these solutions meet you can see a precipitate is formed
This is a double displacement reaction and the precipitate formed is copper hydroxide in the next demonstration we’re going to look at the reaction between copper nitrate solution and sodium hydroxide in this demonstration concentrated sodium hydroxide solution is going to be petted into the blue copper nitrate solution and when these solutions meet again we can
See a precipitate is formed and this precipitate is again copper hydroxide and the double displacement reaction has also formed sodium nitrate which remains in solution in the penultimate demonstration we’re going to show the rather gruesome reaction between concentrated sodium hydroxide solution and a raw chicken drumstick this reaction is shown by immersing a
Chicken drumstick in the solution or a beaker of concentrated sodium hydroxide solution and around 60 degrees celsius after about an hour when we decant the solution you can see quite gruesomely for the chicken drumstick has effectively turned into a liquid soap and all that’s left over is a chicken bone so this illustrates the potentially dangerous nature a sodium
Hydroxide solution in our final demonstrations as promised we get an experiment for the logic locks of sodium metal i do this experiment we ventured outside rather than to conduct this experiment in the workshop set the cameras up and chucked a rather large block sodium metal into a lake of water and after a few moments we have an upscaled reaction of what we saw
In the workshop thanks for watching
Transcribed from video
Sodium metal and water By Energy Materials
