and two teenage friends first watch as ‘a frenzied molten blob’ of potassium threatens to set light to his bedroom laboratory, and then go out to throw a three-pound lump of sodium in Highgate Ponds. ‘It took fire instantly and sped around and around the surface like a demented meteor, with a huge sheet of yellow flame above it. We all exulted — this was chemistry with a vengeance!’ Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001), pp.122-3.
