What is the craziest element in the periodic table?

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Well, you have your usual culprits:

• Caesium (element 55)
  • Explodes in contact with water, in a much more dramatic fashion than its other alkali-metal brethren.
• Francium (element 87)
  • A more reactive version of Caesium that’s also radioactive!
  • We can only synthesise tiny amounts of it, though
• Fluorine (element 9)
  • Evilly reactive gas. Don’t get on the wrong side of fluorine — it will mess you up.
• Carbon (element 6)
  • The fact that it is the basis of all life on Earth is pretty darn crazy.
  • Then you’ve got the really cool allotropes like graphite, diamond and graphene
• Osmium (element 76)
  • The densest naturally occurring element
• Curium (element 96)
  • Glows purple in the dark (SO COOL)
  • Also has some interesting magnetic properties
  • Did I mention it glows in the dark?
• Thallium (element 81)
  • Badass poison — it even beats arsenic into this list
• Mercury
  • Liquid metal at room temperature? Yes please!

For some people “hydrogen” is crazy — but hydrogen is, like, 75% of the observable universe. That’s not crazy. Hydrogen is normal.

However, I’d like to give a shoutout to Gallium (element 31).

A non-transition metal in the p-block. Sounds pretty boring, right?

Well, it actually has some really interesting properties when applied to solid state physics, as a dopant in semiconductors, and so on (Gallium Arsenide also holds the distinction of being involved in the most accurate experiment I have ever performed!)

However — I like it because of a prank!

You see, gallium has a really low melting point.

At room temperature, it’s just about solid — but human body temperature is enough to melt it:

And it melts in your hands!

This forms the basis of a famous prank (and the name of a rather excellent book by Sam Kean)

You can make a spoon with the head made out of gallium — and when you use it to stir your tea — it vanishes!

See — scientists do have a sense of humour!