Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Dr. Poopy Pants Edition

So, last week, I played one of my favorite Brainiac clips, in which ampules containing alkali metals were dropped into water and comedy ensued. And by comedy, I mean explosions. Why the hell else would I post that on a Tuesday?

Well, someone came along and told us about how Brainiac has been known to enhance their explosions a wee bit. Oh, boo hoo! It's blowing shit up Tuesdays, man! When in doubt, use C-4. Or would that still be considered "cheating", Dr. Poopy Pants?

So, I went out and found another video detailing some of the fun times that can be had when mixing those metals found in the first column of the periodic table with water. In case you were wondering (and I know that you were), the first column is called the 'alkali metals', as opposed to the second column, which is the 'alkaline earth metals.'

When the alkali metals react with water, they produce a base (opposite of acid) and hydrogen gas. It's the hydrogen gas that's the problem here. You can see it bubbling out rather inconsequentially with the lithium and the sodium, but when you get down to potassium, the heat of reaction is such that it causes the produced hydrogen to ignite. Further down the periodic table and things get...well...more 'splosive. Let's find out.

Dang, that crystallizing dish didn't know what was coming, did it? Notice how they spelled cesium as caesium? I won't go into the hairy details about the name this week. Get it? Hairy? Fuck, I'm clever.

But wait, there's more! Underneath cesium there is another metal, francium! Time for another history lesson. Can you guess where francium was discovered? That's right, Gaul! In modern lingo, we call it France. It's also the rarest of the naturally occurring elements, with only an estimated 20-30 g of the stuff existing at any given time throughout the entirety of the Earth's crust. The reason it's so rare is because every isotope of francium is radioactive, and so it's constantly decaying into something else (radon and radium). It's longest-lived isotope is around 30 minutes. If you're looking for it out in nature, it can be found in ores of thorium and uranium.

Now, if the trend of reactivity toward water holds true as we travel down the periodic table in the first column, and since francium is under cesium, it should be more reactive than cesium. And cesium just totally blew the shit out of a crystallization dish. Let's see what happens when you mix francium with water, shall we?



Aye, that's the stuff!

So, sure, Brainiac might have augmented their explosions a little bit; I mean, Christ, we all get those emails in our spam boxes about augmentation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who clicks on the links--out of idle curiosity, naturally--right? Right? Why do I hear crickets?

Anyway, the point was that, even if Brainiac tossed in some extra shizz with their alkali metals, the stuff is still pretty potent. And it makes for a great Tuesday morning read, right? Right?

Where the fuck are all those crickets coming from? I should spray or something...