Gotta love those exothermic reactions!! Did you ever do the chunk of sodium in the kiddy pool demonstration?? That's fun to watch! Most schools won't do it any more.
My teacher did the sodium (very small chunk), and a friend did red lithium (I think it was lithium, comes in red and white, the red being more stable) in the school garbage can in a restroom...quite a hard fire to put out. I wasn't involved, REALLY, and only heard about it after the fact. I think he was trying to get rid of the evidence...Burned a nice hole in the tile floor. I really loved high school chem class. We had an eccentric teacher who would do most of these for us, as long as we didn't have to clear out the classroom more than 5 times in a year...we did 4 that year! In college chem, I got the raw materials to make a small amount of nitroglycerin (high school teacher wouldn't let me do a science fair project on it, so I did my own in college). I was interested to find that it doesn't "blow up" with fire and flames and all that, but merely expands 2000X pretty quickly. Got lots of acid and junk on me, but was able to get it washed off before any permanent damage was done. My friends/witnesses all got a kick out of it!
