4 ms·
"The researchers filled a syringe with sodium and potassium, a mixture that is liquid at room temperature, and placed it in a vacuum chamber. They then used the
by savant_penguin 5y ago
"The researchers filled a syringe with sodium and potassium, a mixture that is liquid at room temperature, and placed it in a vacuum chamber. They then used the syringe to form droplets of the metal mixture and exposed them to small amounts of water vapour."
Why will it react slowly under these conditions? As I understand it this is just NaK + water (in vapour form), why isn't the reaction just as fast?
- yetihehe 5y agoBecause you add water more slowly, essentially atom by atom, otherwise you would have to add picoliter sized drops of water or small amounts of very fine dust of metal.
- denton-scratch 5y agoI'm surprised to learn that Na + K is liquid at room temperature; both Na and K on their own are solids at room temperature. I enjoyed "Can we have the balcony for explosions"!
- hinoki 5y agoI wonder if it’s an [0] eutectic alloy? This property is used to make solders that melt more easily, and cast iron is easier to melt than wrought iron, which explains the name. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_system
- pfdietz 5y agoAnd, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, the ammonia + lithium eutectic has a melting point below 90K!
- pas 5y agoProbably the reaction is just as fast, but since they add very (very!) small amount of water, when the free electron bubbles collapse and the electrons interact with the H2O molecules the released energy is not enough to cause the usual macro scale effect (the phase change of water to steam, and thus the explosion).