So a colleague just celebrated his birthday, in the time-honoured manner of giving out cakes and doughnuts to everyone in the room. There's a semi-tradition that one also coyly hints at one's age on these occasions, by providing some sort of riddle. His riddle was simply ‘Rubidium’. (Of course, referring to an actual periodic table or using Google would have been cheating.)
So, after nearly ten years, my A-level chemistry came in useful for something. I was willing to bet it'd never happen. :-)
Rubidium is one of the Group 1 metals, which most people at my school tended to remember vividly because they're the ones that react explosively with water. Rubidium is the next one up from potassium; its reaction with water is a bit too vicious for a school chemistry teacher to actually demonstrate, but there are apparently videos of a demonstration floating around somewhere and it tends to be spoken of in hushed tones in boy's-school society (which is after all composed almost exclusively of raving pyromaniacs).
My favorite's caesium, though. Caesium actually explodes on contact with water, shattering the half-inch-thick glass basin being used for the demonstration.
And, I have seen such a video. It involved a large glass dish of water which was in several pieces by the end of the demonstration.