[Mr. Pink]

I know im new here, and please excuse the huge amount of topics. Anyways, my friend had a Li-Poly battery that burnt out, and he didnt want/need it anymore, so he agreed to give it to me, and i'd keep the Li for reasons that i would like to keep to myself ( i hope none of you are from the NRC ). stupidly anough, he wanted to take out the sheets of Li himself. So, the next day at school, he gave me a bag of what looked like blackened tin foil. I sighed and brought home what i knew was next-to-useless Lithium Oxide. So, how do i get it away from the oxygen?

[miaskows]

What you actually has, is not Li2O but complicated mixture of Li3N ;LiOH and Li2CO3

Elementary Li ,exposed to wet air undergoes following reactions:
2Li+2H2O=2LiOH+H2
2LiOH + CO2= Li2CO3 + H2O
6Li+ N2=2Li3N (Li-nitride)
Li3N+3H2O=3LiOH +NH3

Be carefull with the mix.

Recuperation of elementary Li from it's salts is almost impossible task under conditions avialable for high school  pupil:
1) Electrolysis of melted LiCl/KCl (t>500oC) in  inert atmosphere or high vacuum.
2) Heating up to 1000 oC of liquid Al with Li2O under high vacuum ( 0.1Pa !)
Please , don't  try any from the mentioned above methods! It is too dangerous.

[xiankai]

lithium is so reactive that it does not occur in free form on earth. if u need to obtain lithium, apart from obtaining its pure form, instead try to find a way to react lithium with other compounds to form the lithium compound u need

[constant thinker]

Personally as much fun as it would be to throw the Alkali metals into water, I would never want to mess around with them do to their reactivity.

Also I was wondering though do they sell the alkali metals in their elemental form. A search I mad last year yielded no results with a supplier of the elemental alkalis.

[jdurg]

Sadly they don't.  The pictures I have in my element collection are just artistic representations of what the pure alkali metals look like.  

(Back to reality, of course they sell them as pure elements.  How else do you think schools and teachers get them?)