Many of us gained our first appreciation for chemistry upon witnessing a high school teacher drop a chunk of sodium into a beakerful of water. You may think you know the explanation behind the ...

For decades, science enthusiasts have delighted at the famously energetic way sodium and potassium explode on contact with water. Researchers in Europe now show that the long-accepted explanation for ...

When a chunk of alkali metal gets tossed into water, it explodes. But when a team of scientists gently placed a liquid drop of a sodium-potassium alloy on top of a water surface, they observed a ...

In a demonstration that defies basic assumptions in physics, researchers have created liquid sodium at room temperature. As a member of the alkali metals—the first column in the periodic table—sodium ...