What is your favorite element?

[Ununhexium]

Take a guess. Take a wild wild guess.

Just kidding I probably like beryllium the most. Its light, its strong, its toxic, its the whole package. Also, beryl is a key component in emeralds which are pretty :) so yeah, beryllium.

 

[breh]

Bromine.

Although it does one thing like the rest of the halogens do (oxidize things), it does so in the perfect way with respect to carbon compounds; it doesn't go overboard like fluorine or chlorine and it doesn't sit like a sack of shit like iodine in most cases. As an anion, it's still stable enough, though, meaning that it can stay on and get off when it needs to. Without it, most organic syntheses would be way more complicated.

On the other hand fuk Chromium it's an annoying piece of shit element whose oxides cause cancer

 

[BenTheDemon]

Carbon.
It has its own branch of chemistry, and we can't live without it.

 

[Mr.E]

Helium, Curium and Barium. ^___________________^

DON'T MAKE ME EXPLAIN IT

 

[comatthew6]

Helium, Curium and Barium. ^___________________^

DON'T MAKE ME EXPLAIN IT

I got the joke can I has cheezbergre?

Uh my favorite element is probably chlorine due to its reactiveness and ability to stabilize a -ve charge so it's cool and stuff during orgo. It's also yellow.

 

[Jordan Cameron]

I love this topic already. Tungsten is definitely a favourite. Silly Tungsten, there's no W anywhere in your name.

 

[Limi]

I love this topic already. Tungsten is definitely a favourite. Silly Tungsten, there's no W anywhere in your name.

Actually, the W comes from the German name for it, which is Wolfram (and really cool in itself). And aside from being in the one-letter symbol elite, it also has been used for the wire in lightbulbs because it has the highest melting point of all elements (not a low one silly GatoDelFuego), so it has literally brightened people's outlook on life since the late 19th century. A lot of the other 6th period elements also have pretty cool properties, like osmium being the densest, rhenium being the rarest (not radioactive), gold for being the most malleable and noble, mercury for having the lowest melting point of all metals and bismuth for being crazy shit.
I also quite like chromium for its name but I don't really know enough about chem to have an educated opinion on it.

 

[Jordan Cameron]

Actually, the W comes from the German name for it, which is Wolfram (and really cool in itself). And aside from being in the one-letter symbol elite, it also has been used for the wire in lightbulbs because it has the highest melting point of all elements (not a low one silly GatoDelFuego), so it has literally brightened people's outlook on life since the late 19th century. A lot of the other 6th period elements also have pretty cool properties, like osmium being the densest, rhenium being the rarest (not radioactive), gold for being the most malleable and noble, mercury for having the lowest melting point of all metals and bismuth for being crazy shit.
I also quite like chromium for its name but I don't really know enough about chem to have an educated opinion on it.

All the more reason to love it.

 

[JimBob]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Osmium for being the heaviest metal around.

Especially in the days of lots of things being made of plastic (or being hollow or whatever), we're used to eyeballing something's size and then subconsciously guessing at what it's going to weigh before we pick it up. I love that quick feeling of surprise when I'm distracted, and pick up something that's solid metal and thinking "whoa, that's way heavier than I expected". And Osmium is the big boss of that with a density of 22.6 g/cm. For comparison, steel has a density of about 8 g/cm.


Second place is Bismuth for oxidizing so colorfully (I think someone already posted a picture of it, that stuff is so cool).

 

[Brambane]

Phosphorus

Pugna is made of phosphorus

 

[Xlstevo]

I would say my favorite element would be Platinum because its a soft silvery type of metal. Also, I enjoy playing the game Pokemon Platinum. Platinum is used for many things that we do in our daily lives, such as cars, jewelery, etc. This type of metal is also extremely rare as well.

 

[sidakarya]

Caesium, because it breaks glass vessels when you put it in water. It's the closest thing to liquid gold, when you look close to it (and not die)

Second place being Bismuth for its beautiful oxidised crystals.

 

[Ununhexium]

Cesium is pretty cool (because the "a" is for scrubs). Also, it explodes almost on contact with water.

Sodium blows up more though.

 

[Mazz]

Silicon. Geology major, and the shit's everywhere.

"If there were no rocks, where would you stand...?"

 

[meteor64]

Probably go with Bismuth, for reasons already cited. Stupidly long half life, produces great hopper crystals most of the time, and is pretty af. One time in secondary school I took some of my own sample in for my teacher to have a look at, we ended up melting it down and mixing it with tin and made this amazing alloy that I realised could actually double as a pencil lead except it barely wore down at all, I used the crap out of it and barely noticed any kind of wear. Can't imagine it being a commercial success given the relative scarcity of bismuth but god damn it was awesome and I need to make that shit again some day (lost it somewhere when I moved house), never need to buy bundles of pencils and sharpeners again

 

[farmer Potato]

Carbon

It is a funny, noncharged element. It is also responsible for all large organic structures that form life.

 

[Minwu]

Carbon

I find it the most interesting to study atomically by miles, it forms more common molecules than anything else and we've got a whole year of schooling for it here and it's important in pharmaceuticals and GMOs, both of which I'm strongly into scientifically and socially