Fortunately there was no wildlife in the swimming pool... 

I've got a lovely big chunk of Na that's sitting happily in a container of oil but I am planning on demonstrating the reaction to my daughter later this year by dropping a piece of it into the river from a bridge one evening when the river is fast flowing. I don't feel comfortable making NaOH when the river is not fast flowing as I have no intention of harming any wildlife.

https://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/01/Sodium-Potassium-Really-Explode-Water.html

A guy on youtube recently researched why sodium actually explodes on contact with water. It is sure 150+ years old school demo reaction, but no one knew what is going on in the exact details.  It turned out that there are some wicked physics behind this, and not, it is not hydrogen that explodes. Actually, if sodium reacts with the water  as a chunk, is shall not explode as contact area is rather low. He found that after sodium melts on a slow reaction, it suddenly forms multiple spikes on the sodium-water interface, increasing contact area multiple orders of 10's. And then reaction goes much faster explosion-like. It is not well understood why the spikes are formed, probably because of electric field (!) generated by Na-H2O reaction itself.

In the go kart, ther was a problem with the accelerator line when it got tangled (kept on). Since the area didn't allow crashing (even with rubber bumpers and old tyres as the lining if the track), I was holding the break every second of it.


They told me never to press the break and accelerator both at the same time, I wonder, does it take a screenshot if you do so?


Also, having power steering fail on a double deck bus must have been terrific [size=78%]![/size]

Hello I would certainly be interested in taking these off your hands, I mean I dont need 11 of them, but if no one else comes forward, I would gladly be there to give them a good home



but what I am also interested in, is do you know what happened to the fixtures they where used with, are they still about? I would love see what the fixtures are, and what control gear/ballast they have if you have any pictures of that?


I have been looking myself for a specific type of M47 ballast and I am wondering if these floodlights might contain such ballasts?

Heh..! Tell me about it, I once had the power steering fail halfway around a roundabout in one of these   

Oh yes, I've chucked a large chunk, what was left of the year's supply, into the school swimming pool. 
That was impressive... The water spout hit the ceiling, and some tiles at the bottom of the pool cracked. 

Well they didn’t take the offer.

Today I went to a go kart racing area, turns out driving without power steering is very hard.