Perhaps a result of overcharging lithium cells? That's known to cause metallic lithium plating, definitely not a normal or a desired state in a Li-ion cell.

Or, you are seeing metallic electrodes or other current carrying connectors that are not made of lithium.

Right, but water not being readily burnt is not evidence that hydrogen is inert.

Yes. You are correct.

Thankfully kitchen sodium is in compound form, and thus not likely to react violently with water. In this context, the properties of pure metallic sodium are relevant because it would need to be handled in manufacturing. Kitchen salt is more commonly mined or extracted, requiring minimal to no handling of pure metallic sodium.

I hope this helps clarify any misunderstandings.

But the Na has lost its electron to the Cl, so not the same thing.

And both of them contain a bunch of protons, yet neither, nor their combination, behave like loose protons (aka Hydrogen).

> Did _you_ skip them classes?

That's crossing the line into hostile pedantry--there's no reason to get nitpicky over which step in the reaction chain is most-to-blame for someone losing their eyebrows.

Fooker is still correct that (A) the metallic-vs-salt difference is very important and (B) bringing those metals together with water can cause explosions.

The reaction is exothermic and also produces H2 gas. If the metal ignites it can also ignite the H2 gas which gets spicy in a hurry, so it's reasonable for someone to interpret that as the metal exploding.

Sodium definitely does explode on contact with water, although not as violently as potassium.

Here's one of the search results for "sodium explosion": https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16771

Unless your comment is about how an explosion needs a pressure wave and sodium is just really burning hydrogen or something.