Sodium
Sodium exploding on contact with water
You really shouldn't experiment with sodium at home, because it blows up. When sodium touches water, it mixes with the water so that two atoms of sodium and two molecules of water (hydrogen and oxygen) make two molecules of acid (sodium hydroxide) and one molecule of hydrogen. Then the heat from the reaction sets off the hydrogen and it explodes. Sodium would be hard to experiment with at home anyway, because sodium doesn't occur naturally on Earth and you'd have to buy it at a chemical supply place. So instead here is a website with a lot of videos showing sodium blowing up. Enjoy!
Main page about Sodium
More about salt
Salt in human history
To find out more about atoms, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
