A high school friend once related the story about how his father, a chemist for an environmental waste concern, disposed of a problematic quantity of metallic sodium by dumping it into one of the more ...

The spectacular reaction of alkali metals with water was poorly understood — despite being a staple of chemistry classes. It’s the classic piece of chemical tomfoolery: take a lump of sodium or ...

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 ...

A research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated ultrafast ...