Sodium metal reacts with water to produce hydrogen gas what best describes this reaction

Single displacement or reduction/oxidation

Explanation:

In a single-displacement reaction, one element exchanges partners with another.

This is a single-displacement reaction, because the element Na exchanges partners with H.

This is also a reduction/oxidation (redox) reaction, because the oxidation number of Na increases from 0 to +1 (oxidation), while the oxidation number of H decreases from +1 to 0 (reduction),

The most common types of reactions are:

Combination

Decomposition

Single displacement

Double displacement

Reduction/oxidation

alkaline metals are lithium, sodium, rubidium, potassium, cesium and francium.

alkali metals have electronegativity from 0.7 to 1, lowest in periodic table of elements, which means that alkali metals (i group in periodic table) has positive oxidation number in compounds.

electronegativity is a chemical property that describes the tendency of an atom to attract a shared pair of electrons towards itself.

alkaline metals (far left in main group) have lowest ionizations energy and easy remove valence electrons,

for example, potassium is the alkali metal and has a single valence electron in the outer electron shell.

electron configuration of potassium is: ₁₉k 1s²2s²2p⁶3s²3p⁶4s¹.

they can not exist alone in nature, because they are very reactive.