This video link shows the US government in 1947 dumping 20,000 lbs of “dangerous metallic sodium” into a lake. The effects are impressive. The video shows spectators gathered on the banks of the lake. Would inhaling the fumes pose a health risk to them, or ecological damage to the lake? Or is this entirely benign because it is, well, sodium?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3825610222960975525&q=sodium+lake&hl=en
Note to self: It’s an “alkili lake, devoid of fish.”
The fumes that are being produced should just be water vapor, assuming (big if) a complete reaction. Essentially, the sodium reacts with the water to produce hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide. The heat from this reaction then ignites the hydrogen with the atmospheric oxygen to produce water vapour, hence all the pretty lights. There might still be some residual hydrogen gas in the fumes, but pure hydrogen doesn’t have any adverse health effects (unless, of course, it displaces the oxygen you need to breathe. Or it ignites in your face.)
The sodium hydroxide would be left behind in the lake, and increase its pH somewhat; but seeing as the lake was already alkali, it probably wouldn’t make too much of a difference. It’d be interesting to calculate exactly how much of a difference it made, but you’d need to know the approximate volume of the lake and the amount of sodium dumped to estimate that.
I should have spelled it: alkali. 
I was assuming an incomplete reaction, though I don’t know how likely that is.
Alkali Lake, huh?
Were there any X-men or crazed generals around? :eek:
Having quenched small amounts of sodium in water (really is part of the job) I can tell you that those fumes are not just water. They are very alkaline and probably pretty toxic. It looked like a pretty big lake so it probably didn’t change the pH too much. I can’t tell though without a volume.
How the heck did they get 20,000 tons of extra metallic sodium? It’s not exactly the easiest substance to acquire!
If it wasn’t before they dumped the sodium in, it is now.
on the plus side - instant lutefisk
Si
Oh. Pounds. Still… the question remains.
Note the sound effects in the video. The sound is just like the howitzers in the WWII movies. Hmmm.
I’ve “quenched” sodium out of experimental apparatus, too. (Pour water into big metal test tube coated with alkali metal = instant cannon. Fun stuff. Wear protective gear and don’t piut anything near the end of the tube. Pour slowly and don’t let it point at anything flammable) I don’t recall anything but hydrogen and flame coming out. I suppose you might get bits of alkali metal coming out if they’re expelled with force or sodium hydroxide droplets, but the sodium and water reaction is only supposed to produce sodium hydroxide (which pretty much stays in solution) and hydrogen.
I’m surprised they had to dispose of it – couldn’t they sell it? There’s always been a market for sodium, and it can be used in a lot of reactions, especiallty if put in suspension. You can store it safely under oil. If you roll it out as sheets and leave them in moist air they’ll pretty much turn into sodium hydroxide sheets. But I guess dmping it in water guarantees it’ll be made safe very quickly, and has a pleasing "Mythbusters"esque explosion to it.
I can only imagine what would happen with an equivalent amount of cesium! I wonder if that old science film of a pellet of cesium destroying the experiment container (with the demonstraters behind a protective barrier,) is around on the Interlink somewhere…
I’ve quenched most of the alkali metals out of that tube (we didn’t have Francium, darn it!), and they do increase in the spectacle of their destruction as you go up in weight (lithium is pretty unimpressive), but in small amounts it’s not like a bomb.
II’m told that the eminent and weird physicist Robert W. Wood used to go around the city of Baltyimore a century ago, dressed up in a black coat and black hat, with bits of sodium wrapped in twists of tissue paper. He used to throw these into puddles and watch the expressions of passers-by. fun with Science.
Google will reveal the link, but I’m guessing the mods wouldn’t smile on it being directly linked, given current events.
The narrator made a comment that they couldn’t find a carrier to ship it to prospective buyers.
And you’ve never gotten a whiff of alkali? I get it from 50 microliters of n-butyllithium. Some of that “smoke” is probably sodium oxide from an incomplete reaction. Especially on such a large scale.
I’ve only gotten to potassium, and that one was very very controlled.
The body of water is Lake Lenore, in Washington State.
“Five and one-half miles long and only 20 feet deep, lake Lenore’s 1670 acres is too alkaline to support fish other than Lahontan cutthroat. A fish kill due to high water temperature in 1998 has slowed the fishing, however the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife expects the lake to recover by next year.”
From those units I come up with a volume of 41,198,458,167.8 liters. 20,000 lbs of sodium comes to 394,603 moles of sodium. That’s an increase in molarity of hydroxide by 9.58 E-6 M. From a pH of 7 I get an increse of pH to pH 8.9. That is not insignificant. From a pH of 8 it increases to pH 9.0. From a pH of 9 it increases to pH 9.3. From a pH of 10 it goes up to pH 10.03 and after that the increase in pH is insignificant.
You know, I look at the cliffs on that lake and have a hard time believing its only 20 ft deep. Also I’m pissed off that nobody appreciated the hard work I put in to figuring out those pH changes. I got into a fight with my wife over this!
Your wife gave you flack–over my OP???
May a diseased yak befriend your wife–and a weird holy man anoint her nectarines.