Lowbrow Answer: HeliumThe only thing we use this for is to inflate things, and it doesn't even work that well. As soon as you let go of your Spongebob Squarepants birthday balloon, it floats up into the heavens, never to be seen again. Great. Thanks, Helium. Now my 5-year-old son is crying.
Helium is just a cheap knockoff of Hydrogen anyway. They look and behave the same except that Helium is less flammable, and thus, less interesting.
Middlebrow Answer: MercuryOne of only four liquids on the periodic table, Mercury is the most toxic non-radioactive substance on the planet. Cool, right? It's also super dense, which means you can float all kinds of shit in it that doesn't float in anything else. Stuff like rocks or witches.
The downside to Mercury is, of course, that it's the most toxic non-radioactive substance on the planet. Ever seen pictures of Minamata? No? Good. Keep it that way.
Highbrow Answer: EinsteiniumThis shit was first discovered in the debris of a1952 hydrogen bomb explosion and may or may not be metallic or silver in color. Nobody knows because it doesn't exist naturally and you can't make too much of it in one place because it becomes hyper-radioactive. Cooooool.
Also, Einstein was the fucking man. Relativity is the coolest shit ever. No? You don't agree? You think my talk of relativity is boring and nerdy? You're an idiot. Relatively speaking.
I worry about Einsteinium being too ironic to be Highbrow. Sure, Einstein was highbrow, but can't you just see high schoolers walking around in t-shirts that say some bullshit like "I poop Einsteinium"?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the attributes of Einsteinium are perfectly highbrow - but the name is what I worry about.
I think Francium might be a good alternative - it's the heaviest of all elements, is also highly radioactive, is named after France and was discovered by Marguerite Perey in a time when most women were still being forced to make dinner by their asshole husbands.
It's also naturally occuring but there's less than 30 grams of it in existence at any given time. You can also make it by bombarding thorium with protons, deuterons, or helium ions, which sounds totally fucking awesome.
I got all this information from the decidedly un-highbrow source of Wikipedia.