--- title: Power It With Sodium (But Please Don’t) | daily.dev description: A hobbyist known as Applied Science built a working demo of a 1970s-patented sodium-water power generator, which produces electricity via a spinning metal disk... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/power-it-with-sodium-but-please-don-t--bqqxqjqkv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Power It With Sodium (But Please Don’t) | daily.dev og:description: A hobbyist known as Applied Science built a working demo of a 1970s-patented sodium-water power generator, which produces electricity via a spinning metal disk... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/power-it-with-sodium-but-please-don-t--bqqxqjqkv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/bQQXQJQkV.png og:image:alt: Power It With Sodium (But Please Don’t) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Power It With Sodium (But Please Don’t) **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hobbyist known as Applied Science built a working demo of a 1970s-patented sodium-water power generator, which produces electricity via a spinning metal disk and sodium electrode separated by a thin water gap, but risks violent combustion if power isn't drawn fast enough. Mechanical challenges included connecting to the spinning disk (solved with a gallium-indium-tin liquid-metal contact) and compensating for the shrinking sodium electrode. The build details are published on GitHub, though the device is impractical and dangerous for real-world use. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How does a sodium-water power generator actually work? It works by using a spinning metal disk positioned extremely close to a sodium electrode, with water flowing through the tiny gap between them; electricity flows between the two electrodes as the sodium reacts with water. Drawing power fast enough prevents the sodium-water reaction from combusting spontaneously, while insufficient draw can cause an explosion. _Hardware tinkerers exploring unconventional power sources can find more builds like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Pendulum Powered Battery](https://daily.dev/posts/pendulum-powered-battery-mv5jwtij0) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Chinese scientist built a sodium battery that charges in 4 minutes. 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Drawing power fast enough prevents the sodium-water reaction from combusting spontaneously, while insufficient draw can cause an explosion. Hardware tinkerers exploring unconventional power sources can find more builds like this on daily.dev."}}]} ```