I learned yesterday in the lab that aluminum reacts with water (though not always so spectacularly like in the video above). The barrier to witnessing this is that it usually is coated in a thin layer of alumina (oxidized aluminum). If you want to witness this reaction without resorting to molten aluminum, you can treat the surface with mercury (II) chloride, which forms an amalgam with the aluminum. The reaction may then proceed, producing heat and hydrogen gas.
Common sense would dictate that you PLEASE EXERCISE CAUTION WHILE ATTEMPTING THIS OR ANY EXPERIMENT.
