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You can make it with baking soda, marble, and magnesium or tinfoil. Put the baking soda and marble on a pan and put the pan in the oven for 2-4 hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The baking soda is now sodium carbonate and the marble is now quicklime. Leave the sodium carbonate and put few drops of water on the marble. The marble should swell and crack.It has turned into calcium hydroxide. Now dissolve the calcium hydroxide in water and than dissolve the sodium carbonate in another container. Now slowly add the sodium carbonate solution to the calcium hydroxide solution until no more white stuff is formed (precipitate). Now filter the result. Leave the white stuff and let the liquid evaporate. The crystal that is formed is lye. Now weigh out 1 gram lye and 1 gram either finely powdered aluminum or powdered magnesium WARNING: ALUMINUM POWDER IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NO BE USED UNLESS YOU HAVE WELDING GOGGLES BECAUSE IT GLOWS VERY BRIGHTLY WHEN LIT. Now mix the two powders well and than put the mixture in a cone shaped piece of tinfoil and light. If it does no light than try heating the mixture over a small fire. Now turn the black stuff into powder and than take 50 mil of mineral oil and pour it over 200 mil water and than prepare the container your going to store the sodium in by putting mineral oil in the container you plan to store the sodium in. Now drop the slag into the container with mineral oil on top of water. It should bubble and shiny pieces of sodium should float up to the top press them all together and than put the chunk into the container you filled with mineral oil to store. And BAM! you have sodium
If you search "sodium electrolysis", and go to images, multiple diagrams coem up showing liquid, or aqueous, NaCl with two electrodes in the solution connected to a battery. You could probably use a car battery, and you would jus need some sort of clay pot to hold the molten NaCl.
Also beware of the chlorine gas that is one of the products of the reaction (i.e. do this outside adn with really good ventilation)
For people who are freaking out about bombs here, there is a possibility that people saw the video I did where someone shows how to start a basic fire with sodium...For people who don't know much about chemistry and are interested in how to make a fire in a survivalist situation in a downpour with wet tinder, well, they might also decide to ask if sodium is the right thing for that, read further, decide that it is not and move on. That is what I did.
throw it in water find out
Posted:Oct 11, 2007
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