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Just because Talk Like A Pirate Day is over doesn’t mean that it’s too late to enjoy pirate stuff like Etsy seller YellowBugBoutique’s periodic elements pillow that happens to spell out “pirate.” It’s just perfect for all of you science-lovers out there with a penchant for swashbuckling.
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Periodic Table Building Blocks - $33.95
Are you worried that your baby does not have a solid foundation in the academic discipline of chemistry? You need the Periodic Table Building Blocks from the NeatoShop. Remember, it is never too early to start memorizing elements.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more stimulating Toys & Games.
Comments Off Google Instant brings up results for your search terms as you type. That’s weird enough in itself, but use it to type the lyrics to Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song” and it quickly turns to entertainment! -via Boing Boing
Slate is starting a series of posts on the periodic table of elements, with author Sam Kean writing a separate post about each of about two dozen of the most interesting elements. The first entry is for antimony, which I believe, is the sexiest of the elements. It was widely used in alchemy, but had better results elsewhere.
Egyptian women used one form of antimony, stibium, as eyeliner (hence the symbol for antimony, Sb, even though neither letter appears in the element’s name). Pills of the element became popular as a medicine in the 1700s, especially as a laxative, able to blast through the most compacted bowels. It was so good the chronically constipated would root through their excrement to retrieve the pill and reuse it later. Some lucky families passed down antimony laxatives from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, antimony purges the bowels so well partly because it’s poison—the body wants to get rid of it. But these were the days in medicine of fighting fire with fire: Doctors believed the only way to cure a violent illness was with an equally violent reaction to medicine, and antimony’s popularity grew.
Other elements will be posted through the month of July. Link to introduction. Link to antimony.
Oxygen tries to make friends with other elements, with varying results. This animation was Christopher Hendryx’s senior project a year ago at the Ringling College of Art + Design. -via Metafilter
This periodic table of cupcakes is for a chemistry nerd’s birthday party. Each cake is labeled with an element and color-coded by its state of matter. I hear hydrogen and helium are very light and fluffy. Looks like someone already ate ununseptium. Link -via reddit
Xenon {wiki} is the heaviest non-radioactive noble gas. It affects your voice like sulphur hexafluoride (previously at Neatorama) and can get you high like nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Don’t try this at home; just watch these guys breathe it. Link (embedded YouTube clip)
