There’s a white ring of minerals around the lake. I wonder if this is a residue left over from this dumping?

Unlikely. NaOH is highly soluble in water. What you see is probably some salts of magnesium or calcium.

Way to go Phil !!!
(this is in reference to your Comet Gerrard post..somehow my reply ended up here)

Why did they dispose of it that way? They could easily have added chlorine from the rather large chemical weapons stockpiles and made 20 tons of salt.

Actually, this would have made 25.4 tons of salt.

Relative atomic mass of sodium is 22.99 g/mol, whereas that of chlorine is 35.45 g/mol.

Also there would have been the issue of containing the chlorine gas.

I once had an unexpected excess of phosphorus oxychloride, which caused a bit of an explosion, resulting in a cloud of HCl gas spreading across the ceiling of the lab. And the compound I had made being stuck to the ceiling of the lab.

I’ve made Chromic Acid, which was a bit scary (I’ve never seen anything else dissolve stainless steel).

I’ve used hydrofluoric acid, which was very scary indeed. Fortunately, nothing went wrong.

I’ve used lithium aluminium hydride more times than I can remember. Lithal also reacts with water to release hydrogen gas, but not quite as vigorously as sodium metal.

Oh, and I twice used lithium in tritiated water to generate radioactive hydrogen gas. It was boring, I should have used sodium. (The radioactive hydrogen was needed to radiolabel a compound I was using as an enzyme substrate, in a hydrogenation reaction done using a Raney Nickel catalyst, which was also fun* in its own way.)

A fellow PhD student in the same lab got to use phosgene on a regular basis, and such entertaining things as silicon tetrachloride, which, when it reacts with water (and, oh boy, does it ever react with water!!) generates two products – HCl gas and glass.

* By which I mean it spontaneously combusted in air.

. . . which would parallel placement of helium, with an s2 electronic configuration that SHOULD merit placement above the alkaline earths, yet we like to put it with the p6 ‘noble’ gases . . .

Wait, so you think Hemium should be placed according to its s2 electron configuration, but that hydrogen should NOT be placed according to its s1 electron configuration? In what universe is that logical?

Besides, Helium is a noble gas, possessing a complete outer electron shell in its atomic form (which is pretty much the definition of a noble gas).

Note that hydrogen, placed over the alkali metals, is NOT a metal

Is, too.

You just have to subject it to immense pressure to observe its metallic character, such as is found just above the core of Jupiter. Current theory has Jupiter’s immense magnetic field being generated by a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen at the base of the atmosphere.

- further it is just as happy being hydride ion,

Not “happy” as such. Hydride salts react violently with water too.

What hydrogen is “happy” to do is exist as a cation (i.e. a proton, or, in aqueous solution, the hydroxonium ion). Otherwise, how do you explain the very rapid (diffusion-controlled) exchange of hydrogens atoms in water?

Hydrogen has far more in common with the Group I metals than any other group of elements.

My question… What was the Sodium used for during the war? Somehow, I can’t picture balloons filled to Sodium dropped from gliders into enemy lakes.

The sodium experiment burned three nice holes in the chalkboard, they’re still there 30 years later.
Why don’t you desolve US currency(one dime only) in acid? You stink up the school and force an evacuation!
Model hot air balloons and bunsen burners do not mix well, ask your local fire department.
An introduction to what a Leyden jar does, by completing the circuit.

I love science!

At the end of the semester he’d treat his students by just tossing sodium in the lake.

True. Anyone who saw The Horror of Party Beach already knew this.

Sodium!

Life was simpler then, and the producers didn’t have to worry about the audience questioning the appropriateness of what was being filmed or questioning the accuracy of the official story or the post-war propaganda angle.

One of my favourite videos on the Alkali metals, is this old Open University demonsatration.

The calm and orderly explanation of the narrator juxtaposed with the explosive chaos unleashed as the Cesium gets aquainted with H2O. Followed by the lab tech’s little whistle at the end cracks me up.

“Let’s try cesium, our 5th alkali metal.”

Because, in Mythbusters spirit, its more fun!

Who doesn’t like a good big explosion – provided no real harm is done – eh?