The news broke that a railroad car, loaded with pure sodium, had just derailed and was spilling its contents. A television reporter called me for an explanation of why firefighters were not allowed to ...

The periodic table captures a subtle pattern that runs through the chemical elements, the fundamental building blocks of everything around us: from the aluminium in bike frames to the xenon gas in ...

The periodic table arranges all the chemical elements in a specific way. Patterns are visible in the way that elements behave, and this allows us to make predictions about other elements. Gethin: And ...

Alkali metals like lithium, sodium, and potassium are famous for their dramatic reactions with water, from fizzing to full-on explosions. Their single valence electron makes them eager to react, ...