BIG Disclaimer
I know I have had a disclaimer in all of my other articles discussing dangerous chemicals, but this is a pretty big one. This article actually discusses how to make the stuff, so be careful. Some safety precautions you must take is fire safety procedures. (Just have some water or something nearby)
Basic Overview:
In this article, I will be going over a few basic methods of creating sodium metal. Some of them are better than others.
Method 1: Thermite Reaction
For our first method, all you need is some drain cleaner and magnesium fire starters. Use one of those long lighters and burn them, creating a sort of slag. That is sodium metal, albeit a VERY impure version. All it would do when touching water is maybe fizzle a little. So yeah, that isn’t doing much. What can you do?
Method 2: 1-4 Dioxane
Method 2 is actually pretty similar to method 1, where it also uses the same thermite slag. The change? A tasty little liquid called 1-4 Dioxane. Oh yeah, it’s also classified as a 2b carcinogen. If you don’t know what a carcinogen is, it is something that can cause cancer. Yeah, that isn’t the best idea. You also need sulfuric acid to make it, but I don’t know about you, I don’t have that stuff lying around in my kitchen. I won’t tell you how to make this stuff as I don’t want anyone tossing around liquid cancer, or breathing it in.
Method 3: Menthol Crystals
Method 3. Menthol crystals. And no, menthol crystals don’t have anything to do with meth. Don’t get your hopes up. But this is a pretty solid method.
Ingredients:
- Magnesium Metal. (Found as fire starters online for like 16 bucks for 10 packs)
- Sodium Hydroxide. (Found as drain opener in most hardware stores)
- Menthol Crystals (Find them online. You don’t need much)
- Baby Oil (Make SURE that there are ZERO additives, check the label. Btw baby oil is just pure mineral oil so if you have that use it instead)
- One AA size lithium battery (I promise this isn’t a bomb)
The Recipe
- 14 grams of Magnesium (Finer the better)
- 20 grams of Sodium Hydroxide
- 1-2 grams of menthol crystals
- 125ml of mineral oil or baby oil
Our first issue: Technically, you can start with just this, but that won’t work. Why? The water in the sodium hydroxide will etch the flask. Basically, it will stop sodium from forming. In order to do that, we need something to jumpstart the reaction. I used some sodium metal to jumpstart the reaction as that is best, but lithium metal from an AA lithium battery works just fine. Using lithium will dilute the sodium, but that is fine for the use of people like us (We just want big boom boom.) What I did was save a few grams of sodium metal (around 3) from my previous experiment and using it in my next. This dilutes the lithium contamination to minimal levels.
The Complicated Part
You need chemistry equipment for this. Sorry buddy.
- Drop a magnetic stir bar into the mixture (preferably before the lithium was put inside)
- Set up a bubbler apparatus around the mixture
- Wrap the mixture in aluminum foil as an insulator
- Set up a temperature and gas adapter above the mixture
- Set up a thermocouple thermometer covered in glass into the mixture which is connected to a temperature readout display
- Connect the tube to the bubbler
- DO NOT USE WATER (It will explode)
- Make everything except the bubbler airtight
- Turn on stirring and set temperature to around 120-130 degrees Celsius
- Continue for around 2 hours (or until bubbling is very slow)
- Raise temp to 200 Celsius and keep it there
- If bubbler starts bubbling, good. That should be happening
- Keep going until bubbling stops
- Powdered magnesium can take as little as 15, but it should take around 30-40 hours
- Let it all cool down.
- Pour mixture through a kitchen sieve to get the smaller bits
Result:
There will be a small amount of sodium in the kitchen sieve and a large chunk in the flask. It is likely the chunk is too big to fit, so use a knife to cut it into smaller pieces.
Congrats
You have sodium metal. Congrats. What now? I dunno. Throw it in a lake. Chuck it into your bathtub. Watch it go BOOM. For fun! Maybe accidentally make a makeshift flash bomb with it (not me btw)
Credits
Sorry, it wasn’t all me. The third method required a bit of research to pull off so here it is.
Common Chemicals Combine To Make Metallic Sodium | Hackaday
cool
not ok