Meet the Chemiballs; the Explosive Alkali Metals!

The alkali metals are the first group on the periodic table. Their whole thing is that they have some valence electrons but would rather that not be the case. So they really like to pair up with electronegative elements, like oxygen, who can take their electrons allowing the alkali metals to dissolve into solution as cute cations. ¹for more info on cations and electron voodoo in general, check out this other article of mine! http://ravingsofamadscientist.com/how-to-understand-resonance-structures-using-cute-balls/

Contents:

• Lithium
• Sodium
• Potassium
• Rubidium
• Cesium
• Francium

Lithiumball; the Lightest Alkali Metal!

Like most period 2 elements, Lithiumball is very different from everything else in its group. Unlike other alkali metals who don’t really like forming covalent bonds, lithium does and does so strongly. Lithium also doesn’t like attacking oxygen like other alkali’s do. Instead it reacts with nitrogen in the air.

Lithium is rare. It was one of the elements produced by the big bang. But unlike hydrogenball and heliumballoon, the big bang didn’t make very much of it. A lot of the remaining lithium has since been consumed by stars.

Sodiumball; the Saltiest Alkali Metal!

Have you ever tired putting Mentos in Coca-Cola? Pussy shit. Sodium in water is for REAL MEN. Science experiments aren’t even worth doing unless there’s genuine danger of losing a limb.

Sodium is famous for its ability to explode on contact with water and even air. Pretty much every alkali metal ball does this (except Lithiumball). Sodium is just the most popular because it’s the most abundant and is in salt ² s o d i u m c h l o r i d e .

It is also genuinely pretty cool. It’s a metallic metal that’s less dense than water. So it can actually float! But, y’know, only briefly.

Potassiumball; the Banana-est Alkali Metal!

Potassiumball is one of the cations most used by organisms. Including humans.

You probably recognize it from memes. Potassium is one of the most memed elements, mostly because bananas are a good source of potassium and bananas are inherently funny. They’re also radioactive because of the potassium.

Potassium found in nature comes in three flavors isotopes, 39K-39, 40K, and 41K. 40K is a primordial radioisotope, meaning that it’s unstable and experiences radioactive decay! In fact, it’s so dangerously unstable that it’s existed since before the formation of the earth and has a halflife of 1.25 billion years. So it’s not very unstable at all actually, and the radiation it puts out is so minor as to not be dangerous at all.

You might have heard that, in order to get a lethal radiation dose from bananas, the sheer comedic volume of bananas you’d have to eat would probably have already killed you for other reasons.

Potassiumball is also funny because its name sounds funny. Potassium. But you might also think it’s weird that it;s symbol is K. Where the heck does the K come from?

As is the case with most things, it comes from Germany. The word for potassium in most germanic languages is “kalium”, as in how it’s an alkali.

The real question is where does “potassium” come from? The word “potassium” comes from the word Potash (pronounced po-tash), which itself comes from “pot ash”. You may be aware of how ash can help fertilize crops, such as how plants do particularly well after a forest fire or volcanic eruption. This is because ash tends to be full of potassium which plants have a hard time getting otherwise.

Well, it’s pretty easy to get the potassium out of ash and into a form usable by plants. You just put some ash into a pot with water then let the water evaporate, leaving behind potassium salts. People have been using this method to make fertilizer long before we realized what this “potash” actually was.

Rubidium; the most Useless Alkali Metal!

Alkali metals are generally super useful because of their unique properties. But not Rubidium. Rubidiumball is another one of those forgettable elements with no major industrial applications.

Its properties are similar to potassium, so theoretically it could be used in many of the same applications. But since rubidium is a lot more expensive than potassium, there’s no reason to do that.

Rubidiumball isn’t expensive because it’s rare. It’s just that no one bothers to mine for it intentionally. Meaning that all the rubidium that is available were trace impurities that were taken out of actually useful elements and sold as byproducts. This low supply drives up the cost despite there also being low demand.

Edit: A friendly redditing super giant has assured me numerous times that Rubidium does have some applications, such as being used to make vacuums. So that’s neat.

Cesiumblob; the most Positive Alkali Metal!

Cesium, or Caesium in outdated and uncool British English, is the most positively charged element known. It really, really, doesn’t want to have its valence electrons. So it’s super good at giving them up to other elements then existing as a cation.
Cesium also has such a low melting point that it’s usually a liquid. You may be thinking that Mercury is the only liquid element (besides Bromine). That’s because their melting points are below room temperature while Cesium’s is only slightly above. But what room is this temperature of?

The Europeans, who by sheer virtue of having invaded everyone else in the world attempting to do so, invented science. And thus, they were able to permanently taint it with their bias of hailing from a frozen hellscape continent. The scientific standard room temperature is 20°C (68°F) because that’s a square number that Europeans find comfortable. But, like, that’s actually a little brisk by southern hemisphere standards.

Anyways, the melting point of Cesium is only 28.4°C, so it’s generally pretty easy to melt it and keep it molten. If you’re around the equator it would probably be harder to keep it from melting.

Franciumblob; the Fattest Alkali Metal!

It’s super radioactive and unstable with an extremely short half life.
Despite not being the heaviest, Francium has the physically largest atom of any known element. Most Alkali metals tend to have disproportionately large atomic radiuses on account of them not caring about keeping their valence shells very close. Hence, they tend to spread out a bit.

Apparently, Francium almost got named catium. Its discoverer, a French woman named Marguerite Perey, who discovered it as her doctoral thesis, expected it to be the most positively charged element. Hence it would be the best cation, so catium.
But then the daughter of the late Marie Curie, who spoke English, informed Marguerite that naming it that would be far too hilarious for the English and English speakers. Because cats.

Being very French, Marguerite Perey could not in good conscience allow any English chemistry students to experience even an ounce of joy while memorizing the elements. So instead she named it after FRANCE, as an eternal reminder that there is and will never be an element named “englandium”. That FRENCH SCIENCE shall ALWAYS reign supreme over that of their bitter rivals, the barbaric Englishmen! ³I mean, I love sticking it to the British as much as the next guy, but c’mon! Catium. Catium.
Part of me wants to go back in time to convince her to name it “chatium” instead (“chat” is French for cat) but Curie’s daughter might have seen through that too.

Or maybe I’m reading into it a bit, I dunno.

Marguerite Perey was a feminist icon. If Marie Curie hadn’t already done her whole thing and died a few years prior, she would probably be the face of women in science instead. Also like Marie Curie, the radioactive element she discovered would eventually kill her because she neglected to discover that radiation is bad for your health. History rhymes, I guess.

Addendum

For more Chemiball stuff, check out r/Chemiballs. This is a shockingly obscure community and deserves more attention.

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