Have you seen this!?! Burning saltwater

Jack quiet_celt at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 14 23:37:53 CDT 2007


Yes, H2 has a blue white flame, and sodium orange.
Chlorine burns vomit green. The burning saltwater is
the sodium burning. Of course anything that burns will
cause explosions if you contain the fire like in a
stick of dynamite , a grenade, or a pringles can. I
used to make cannons with rubbing alcohol, tennis
balls and soda cans. Very effective. Sadly,
Mythbusters sometimes promote myths rather than bust
them, like making it seem like H2 is explosive. I've
seen H2 fuel cells burn in crashes. The Hydrogen burns
straight up like a candle.
Sodium and Potassium are highly volatile. Potassium
burns on contact with air (no need for any ignition).
Hence it is used in incendiary bombs. Potassium is
very
dangerous stuff. Almost impossible to put out. You
have to remove all the oxygen, hence you can't use
water to put it out (well there is ONE way), it just
burns the water releasing hydrogen which then burns
also. Nice hunh?

 
--- Jeremy Fowler <jeremy.f76 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was watching Mythbusters last night, and they were
> doing all kinds of
> explosive experiments. In one experiment, they made
> a Pringles can explode
> using hydrogen and leaving the chips fairly intact. 
> One thing they pointed
> out was that Hydrogen, when it burns, has a clear,
> nearly invisible white
> flame. This got me thinking about the burning
> saltwater, which was an
> orange-yellow flame. So, its probably not the
> Hydrogen burning. So that got
> me wondering what was burning in that saltwater.
> Well, maybe its the salt I
> thought. Salt, Sodium chloride, is fairly inert.
> However, Sodium by itself
> is really active and quite explosive when it comes
> into contact with water.
> Here's a great site with a guy doing sodium
> experiments, including throwing
> it into water and burning it:
> 
>
http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/011.2/
> 
> If you look at the sodium flame, its a similar
> orange-yellow flame in the
> saltwater experiments. So, it highly probable the RF
> is making the sodium in
> the water burn. So, what to you amateur chemists and
> physicists have to say
> about this? Is it still a possible fuel source if
> its only burning the
> sodium?
> 



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