Sodium As a Fire Starter?

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Peter La

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I was thinking about this and wondered if anyone here had tried it. A relatively small piece of sodium (about the size of a penny) will burn for about 10 seconds. Naturally, I am talking about a "chunk" rather than the powder. This element must be kept in a water tight container but is quite reliable. All one must do is put the piece of sodium in water and it will ignite. As long as you do not breath in the fumes (I think it is caustic soda), it is perfectly safe.

Has anyone here tried anything like this?
 
Wow, a fire starting technique that works *better* with wet tinder! What about phosphorus, doesn't it burn in air? If they're big enough, two chunks of U238 or plutonium will get really, really hot when you rub them together.:eek: :eek: -Uh oh, now the FBI is reading our thread.:rolleyes: Seriously, there are enough good, cheap, and easy ways to start fires that sodium seems like overkill and maybe not all that safe.

Gordon
 
In 12th grade chemistry class, our teacher took a big chunk of some funny looking metal out of a huge jar of oil, cut a pea sized chunk off of it (easy to do since the metal was quite soft) and with goggles on, and stretched out just as far as he could get it away from the rest of his body, he dropped it into a large beaker of water and then got the livin' hell out of the way.

Up until this point I was most curious to see what he was doing and wondering why, but when flames shot to the ceiling the instant the metal hit the water, my eyes went as wide as saucers. It didn't take me to long to wonder just what would happen if I floated the entire jar of this stuff (it looked to be about a five pound chunk in there) out into a lake and shot it with a .22. (Fortunately I never got the opportunity, or I'm sure I would have tried it.)

It was one of the alkali earth metals, either lithium or sodium, as I recall.

A few years after this I read in the paper about a couple of boys that somehow got ahold of a chunk of this stuff and one of them put it in his pocket. Being summer, when he started to sweat a little it began to react in the manner you would expect, and his buddy pushed him into a nearby stream to put the fire out. If my distant memory serves, it proved to be a fatal mistake. (Anybody else remember this? I'm thinking it was roughly 1982, give or take.) I think it made the national news.

Anyway, to answer your question: I don't think it would be the wisest thing that an aspiring backwoods adventurer could carry for an emergency fire-starter.
 
Yep, pure sodium is nasty stuff. Trying to put a sodium fire out is completely counter-intuitive and can result in a nasty experience as the preceding post stated.

I advise you stay away from it and consider more conventional methods for starting fires.
 
Looks like I walked into a Pyro self help meeting...

Buddy of mine talked about tossing a baseball sized chunk into a lake. The boom/flying water was something to behold evidently! :eek:
 
How about pre-mixing some thermite? Then just carry some magnesium ribbon for a fuse and a couple of matches to light the magnesium.

Oh. Wait.

Never mind. Heh.
 
I had no idea that pure sodium was that powerful. I had just seen a piece about the size of a penny put in water. I guess this was not that pure. Scratch that plan!

mmm...thermite you say? :D
 
A few years after this I read in the paper about a couple of boys that somehow got ahold of a chunk of this stuff and one of them put it in his pocket. Being summer, when he started to sweat a little it began to react in the manner you would expect, and his buddy pushed him into a nearby stream to put the fire out. If my distant memory serves, it proved to be a fatal mistake. (Anybody else remember this? I'm thinking it was roughly 1982, give or take.) I think it made the national news.
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That is pretty sad, partly because he knew it reacted with water and still put it in his pocket. And also because the friend pushed him into a stream!

Sad also in that his life was so pointlessly lost.
 
Yeah, it really was tragic. I remember feeling pretty bad about it, thinking of how horrible it must have been for his friend (I think that they were pretty young boys) to have seen it, and also of course for the one that was killed (or seriously injured - just can't remember). Very sad for all involved.

Again, this is going way back in my memory and I may have some of the facts a bit wrong, but the impression that I got was that they weren't aware of what it would do with water.
 
Troll Bait From Hell said:
In 12th grade chemistry class, our teacher took a big chunk of some funny looking metal out of a huge jar of oil, cut a pea sized chunk off of it (easy to do since the metal was quite soft) and with goggles on, and stretched out just as far as he could get it away from the rest of his body, he dropped it into a large beaker of water and then got the livin' hell out of the way.
.
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Postasium?Highly reactive to water and will ignite when mixed with water
 
On the improvisation side:

What about Potassium permanganate and gylcerine?

I have heard the product of the above is highly exothermic, but is this hot enough to ignite dry gras or other tinder? :confused:

I have heard that potassium permanganate is used to treat athlete's foot so it could be a common thing to have in a "situation." Glycerine is found in some cough syrups and laxatives and is another thing that made be around if needed if a situation where to come up where you had only limited resources.

Has anyone tried anything similar to this?
 
The sodium (as well as calcium, lithium...) metal is very easily oxidized by anything, in this case the water. The product of the reaction is hydrogen gas, and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda/lye...) that remains in solution form. The reaction is so exothermic that the hydrogen gas is ignited, resulting in the flash explosion.

Fun stuff, but its not like you can get sodium metal from the hardware store.
 
Peter La said:
On the improvisation side:

What about Potassium permanganate and gylcerine?

I have heard the product of the above is highly exothermic, but is this hot enough to ignite dry gras or other tinder? :confused:

I have heard that potassium permanganate is used to treat athlete's foot so it could be a common thing to have in a "situation." Glycerine is found in some cough syrups and laxatives and is another thing that made be around if needed if a situation where to come up where you had only limited resources.

Has anyone tried anything similar to this?
Click to expand...


I have tried permangante and sugar. It doesnt ignite itself but when you light it it burns very hot (imagine a flare/ firework). It can be an explosive mixture if you get the ratio of permanganate and sugar correct, and permangante explosives are particularly unstable so be careful and certainly dont carry it pre mixed or mix up more than a tiny amount!

You can buy permanganate at a chemist, tell them you want it as a disinfectant (mix with water)

And yes, it works well on atheletes foot, if slightly brutally. Imagine excrutiating pain as you apply a strong solution of it to your poor bleeding funus-infected toes. The pain continues for probably an hour. The next day you dare peel your sock of and have a look and the skin where you painted it looks like its been barbecued. Over the following weeks it dies and falls off and a nice fresh layer of fungus free skin grows underneath

Go for the proprietary atheletes foot cream instead if you can!
 
Sodium makes a great random fire starter. It catches fire at random times and burns random things.
 
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