"Doug Miller" wrote in message
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In article , "Leon"
wrote:

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article , "Leon"
wrote:

"Kevin Miller" wrote in message
cicommunications...
Ecnerwal wrote:

Interesting. I never took chemistry but my biology teacher did drop a
small ball of sodium in water once. That was fun.

I recall doing that in chemistry, however we were trusted to slice off
a
piece of the sodium ourselves and then cover it back up quickly. The
sodium
would also react to being exposed to air although not as voilently as
dropping a piece in a beaker of water. I forget how the sodium was
stored
to stop the reaction with the air. Corpus Christi was/is a very humid
city.

IIR, it's usually stored in kerosene.

That would sound reasonable... I wonder how it is preserved in nature.

It's not. Sodium doesn't occur in pure form in nature. *Can't* occur in
pure
form, in fact, since it reacts spontaneously with both air and water.

Ahh.. So that raw Na is processed? IIRC in the more pure form it was more
like clay.