High speed camera reveals why sodium explodes! on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2015–2024.
explainer · evergreen
Thunderf00t presents high-speed camera footage of alkali metals such as sodium and NaK reacting with water. The footage shows that the explosion is not caused by hydrogen ignition, as the usual explanation says. It is a Coulomb explosion driven by electrons leaving the metal.
HN links it as the accessible video explanation of the sodium-in-water research, and when Coulomb explosions or sodium batteries come up.
“the video has a nice balance, it's technical but not too technical”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
The article in Nature is about a paper by Thunderf00t (Phil Mason). He published the result in Nature Chemistry and also made a video ▶ this video (the video has a nice balance, it's technical but not too technical).
in “Sodium batteries offer an alternative to tricky lithium” · View on HN
That's the video from before they published (which is still interesting). There is also a more recent video[1] (post-publication[2]) that covers how they got the data (which supports the coulombic explosion hypothesis). While it is mentioned at the end of the newer video, I highly recommend watching the 500fps footage[3] of a drop of NaK burning (just before it explodes) on the top of water. There is a striking color change as it starts to interact with the water, and right the NaK explodes... the metal turns completely transparent . [1] ▶ this video [2] [link] [3] [link]
in “What if I were 1% charged? (2013)” · View on HN
Don't dismiss the guy so easily. For example take a look at one of his papers [link] and the correspondong video ▶ this video
in “Harvester pulls 1.5 gallons of drinking water from arid air per day” · View on HN
That was the comon explanation until Thuderf00t proved otherwise Video in YouTube: ▶ this video Paper in Nature Chemistry: [link]
in “Coulomb explosion” · View on HN
Explain the wrong reasoning and flaws in these videos: [link] ▶ this video [link] [link] [link] I will take your words by face value and assume that none of these videos used or needed any amount of intellectual rigor and that he is not very smart. Okay, but if the bar is that high, then it appears that whatever scam kickstarter he debunks wasn't even on the scale of intellectual rigor or smartness.
in “Can We Throw Satellites to Space? [video]” · View on HN
That makes a lot of sense... thanks! As for molten salts and water... oh yeah. That gets into very dangerous territory.[1] A very similar reaction seems to happen even with just molten table salt, where it "shouldn't". 1 - ▶ this video
in “Application submitted for US molten salt research reactor” · View on HN
The author of the research paper is Phil Mason (Thunderf00t on YouTube). He has another paper[1] and video[2] about making sodium+potasium explode in water. [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video
in “Water transformed into shiny, golden metal” · View on HN
> Really makes you wonder at what other interesting phenomenon are happening in plain sight we've yet to notice. It happens all the time, and is both exciting and a little worrying (because it implies that basic effects that we should already understand, we actually seem to misunderstand quite often). As an example of this, we didn't have a full explanation for why alkali metals seem to explode when you put them on water until YouTube when Phil Mason (thunderf00t) started working on it[1] -- the classic explanation was that it was because of the hydrogen gas released, but this didn't make sense because they would also explode under water. There was a Nature article about it[2], but the gist of it is that once the alkali metal melts and sheds its oxide surface due to the high heat of the reaction there are solviated electrons in the water that attract the metal surface and causes spikes to shoot out from the metal which then cause more spikes and then it all goes bang (because reactions can only happen on the interface -- having more surface area causes more of a reaction) once the surface tension breaks. This also explains why thermite explodes when you put it on ice and similar effects. And the solution to stop these sorts of explosions (which are obviously a hazard for people who work with alkali metals) is to add a weak surfactant (like soap). [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]
in “Water Droplets Don’t Just Hover on a Hot Pan – They Roll” · View on HN
Yep, all batteries and capacitors amount to is electron storage devices. Capacitors are much more prone to becoming coulomb bombs than batteries mostly because they are designed to discharge quickly, which is what makes them implicitly good bombs. It doesn't take much electron movement to make an explosion. In fact, this is how alkali metals react with water. We learnt that only in the past few years. [link] ▶ this video
in “How a Microscopic Supercapacitor Will Supercharge Mobile Electronics” · View on HN
Phil Mason has a video about this research[1] on his YouTube channel. There are several others on there about intermediate results. [1] ▶ this video
in “Sodium's explosive secrets revealed” · View on HN