One day, Johnny and David Kehane came home from M.I.N.D. with a jarful of soft metal, in a bath of kerosene. I watched as they set up a jar of hot water on the front steps of the house. (The front steps of 4453 were the stage for many an event, as these pages will no doubt bear witness.) We all stood back as David carefully cut a slice of the metal and pulled it out of the bath. "This metal burns on contact with air," he said. "And the reaction with water is supposed to be quite violent." We all stood back as he dropped the metal into the water. The reaction was immediate and spectacular: a plume of smoke trailed high up over the house and disappeared onto the roof.
Wow.
Later, we burned a strip of magnesium.
Fun with metals.
Approximate date: 1978? 1979?
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2 comments:
A small elaboration. We knew it was volatile, which is why we had it. But we were pig ignorant otherwise. There was no impressive reaction to air, so we got a container of water and dropped it in. Jonny leaned his face right over the container to get a good look. In the split second he pulled back, KABOOM!
Here's hoping that Solomon Danger has a bit more sense than we did....
It was raw sodium, by the way....
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