[Mick]

Two personal memories about Lake Lag:
2.  In my senior year, there was a junior in our dorm who had come back from a great summer job.  He was a Chem E major, and he worked for a very large oil company (I won't mention it here.)  But he had access to certain chemicals, and had participated in some shenanigans back on the east coast, and promised us all year that we'd end the year with a bang - literally.  So finally, after finals, he kept his promise.  We walked to the edge of Lake Lag where there was a dropoff to the water. He had, ahem, that summer borrowed these sealed canisters of pure elemental sodium.  He opened them carefully (they were pretty good sized bars), placed them into a bag, and tossed it into the water.  In the dark, we sensed only a splash.  A second went by.  Two seconds.  Three seconds.  What gives?  Then .... KA-BOOM - it was a h.uge explosion accompanied by a h.uge ball of fire.  That solid bar of sodium broke up into smaller pieces - each which exploded in a ball of fire, which subsequently broke into even smaller pieces, leading to more balls of fire ...
We stood there in awe of the sound and fury, but the perpetrator turned to us and commanded succinctly, "Let's go."  He explained later that when they pulled this at a public fountain that prior summer, law enforcement detained them.  So he knew better.
Fond memories to this day.

Great story.  My chem teacher in high school dropped a marble-sized chunk of elemental sodium in a pot of water, it spun for a few seconds, then there was a bang about the size of a firecracker.  That was fun, but the next year, our physics teacher -- it was his first year teaching -- wanted to do the same thing.  But he takes a golf ball-sized chunk -- about eight times the size of the prior year's chunk -- and approached the pot. 

Every single one of us -- except one -- had been in the prior year's class, and we all started slowly backing away from the pot.  The teacher didn't notice and dropped the sodium into the pot.  It spun for a very long time, and the kid who wasn't in the prior year's class looked over the pot and said "Oh, nothing's going to hap--"

BOOM!!

There was a fireball about six feet across which took out his eyebrows and a fair chunk of his hair.  He couldn't hear for a few days.  The ceiling turned black, and there was smoke everywhere.

Please don't try that at home...

[Mick]

Two personal memories about Lake Lag:
2.  In my senior year, there was a junior in our dorm who had come back from a great summer job.  He was a Chem E major, and he worked for a very large oil company (I won't mention it here.)  But he had access to certain chemicals, and had participated in some shenanigans back on the east coast, and promised us all year that we'd end the year with a bang - literally.  So finally, after finals, he kept his promise.  We walked to the edge of Lake Lag where there was a dropoff to the water. He had, ahem, that summer borrowed these sealed canisters of pure elemental sodium.  He opened them carefully (they were pretty good sized bars), placed them into a bag, and tossed it into the water.  In the dark, we sensed only a splash.  A second went by.  Two seconds.  Three seconds.  What gives?  Then .... KA-BOOM - it was a h.uge explosion accompanied by a h.uge ball of fire.  That solid bar of sodium broke up into smaller pieces - each which exploded in a ball of fire, which subsequently broke into even smaller pieces, leading to more balls of fire ...
We stood there in awe of the sound and fury, but the perpetrator turned to us and commanded succinctly, "Let's go."  He explained later that when they pulled this at a public fountain that prior summer, law enforcement detained them.  So he knew better.
Fond memories to this day.

Great story.  My chem teacher in high school dropped a marble-sized chunk of elemental sodium in a pot of water, it spun for a few seconds, then there was a bang about the size of a firecracker.  That was fun, but the next year, our physics teacher -- it was his first year teaching -- wanted to do the same thing.  But he takes a golf ball-sized chunk -- about eight times the size of the prior year's chunk -- and approached the pot. 

Every single one of us -- except one -- had been in the prior year's class, and we all started slowly backing away from the pot.  The teacher didn't notice and dropped the sodium into the pot.  It spun for a very long time, and the kid who wasn't in the prior year's class looked over the pot and said "Oh, nothing's going to hap--"

BOOM!!

There was a fireball about six feet across which took out his eyebrows and a fair chunk of his hair.  He couldn't hear for a few days.  The ceiling turned black, and there was smoke everywhere.

Please don't try that at home...