Top 10 Coolest Elements of the Periodic Table

Bismuth is an element that seems normal, but if you look closer, it starts to seem a bit odd. To the left of it on the periodic table are mercury, lead, and thallium, and to the right is polonium. All of these are toxic heavy metals that would not be good to have around.

Bismuth, on the other hand, makes up over 50 percent of Pepto-Bismol by weight and is nontoxic. Also, bismuth is not stable, as its most stable isotope has a half-life of 2.01 × 10^19 years, which is more than a billion times older than our universe.

Because of these oddities, bismuth is one of my favorite elements, and I am glad to see it as number one.

So important to life, we nor anything would be here without it. It has 4 electrons in its outer shell, which just gives it so much potential for bonding, and life absolutely took full advantage of that.

Silicon could technically fill its role theoretically, but silicon has nowhere near as many amazing forms. Steel, diamonds, graphite, and coal would not exist without this beautiful element.

Carbon is usually black like pencil and charcoal but can form a transparent and expensive thing like a diamond. Ridiculous, right?

Gallium is not toxic, so mercury glazers can go ahead and have mercury poisoning. I will take a slightly higher melting point, thank you.

Gallium is just better than mercury. It may not be a liquid at room temperature, but it's even cooler because it melts in your hand. Besides, if melting in your hand doesn't cut it for you and you really want a metal that is a liquid at room temperature, you can easily make Galinstan from 70% gallium, 20% indium, and 10% tin, which is a liquid at room temperature. Furthermore, neither gallium nor Galinstan will give me kidney problems or brain damage when I handle it, so that's a bonus.

Mercury is cool. It's a liquid element and liquid metal at room temperature. It is very dense, which means some other metals can float on its surface, which is cool. However, I have one small complaint: it will give me kidney problems and brain damage. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to say that, whilst Mercury is cool, gallium is just better.

Hands down, way more interesting than gallium. It's really dense and is completely liquid at room temperature. It's the only metal and one of the only two elements liquid at room temperature. It was known to the ancients and was used (and is still used) in a wide array of applications. You would not have fluorescent lamps without mercury, and up until very recently, it was used in thermometers, tilt switches, batteries, dental fillings, gold mining, and so on. It is amazing.

Helium is fascinating stuff. Helium-4 becomes superfluid at 2-3K, one of the greatest quantum effects there is. It was discovered in the spectrum of the Sun, which is also cool. The only element with a boiling point below absolute zero. And what fun we all have when we inhale it.

Helium is the most fascinating element there is. You simply cannot argue.

P.S. It also goes to show that Physics is better than Chemistry.

Helium is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. Helium is a colorless, tasteless, and odorless gas. Helium is the second most common element in the Universe (after hydrogen), making up around 24% of its mass. How cool is that?

Neodymium is used in super strong magnets. Also, I think the name is cool.

It gives you so much wealth. Hey, who doesn't like money, eh?

This element does more within 24 hours, with a half-life of 6 hours, than some stable elements do in their entire careers, such as neon.

Its 99m isotope helps scan the human body and save lives. It is a short but meaningful experience and deserves to be this high up.

More than once every second, a medical procedure is done using Technetium. And while I could definitely say more, I won't for the sake of brevity.

The odd man out. Everything around it isn't radioactive, but it is.

From a non-scientific viewpoint, cesium is kind of like a gold-colored version of gallium in the sense that it melts in your hand and is also super reactive. Who wouldn't think this element is cool?

- Used in atomic clocks and its isotope is used as a definition of a second.
- Softest metal.
- Most "Electropositive" element.
- Has a mostly blue spectrum or flame test.
- Terrific explosion in water.
- Used in infrared materials.
- One of the components for the smallest spacecraft!

What else do you want?

Cesium is an element characterized as an alkali metal and has the atomic number of 55. It is used to help drill oil and make vacuum tubes. The most common everyday use for cesium is with the GPS on your cell phone.

Cesium clocks is the more accurate term for atomic clocks because cesium is used in these clocks. It also has a gold/silver color.

Liquid at room temperature (everyone loves liquid elements).

What's more is that it's a toxic black liquid with red fumes coming off of it. It looks like the blood of some Eldritch horror.

Uses of Holmium:

As a result of its special magnetic properties, holmium is used in alloys for the production of magnets and as a flux concentrator for high magnetic fields. Holmia (holmium oxide) is used as a yellow or red coloring for glass and cubic zirconia.

Holmium has the highest magnetic strength of all elements. Who doesn't like magnets?

This and plutonium were used to make nuclear bombs and power plants.

You can own some, but just not too much.

Tungsten rules. It has a nice grey color and is pretty heavy. Also, tungsten carbide is in no way harder than diamond.

It's heavy, it's dense, and someone left a glowing review on a cube of it on Amazon. What more could you need in life?

Has the highest melting and boiling points of all elements and is essential for light bulbs. How cool is Tungsten?!

A very interesting metal. It isn't naturally present on Earth, so if it is discovered, it is a sign of a meteorite strike.

This is the second densest metal and cannot be corroded even at 2000 degrees Celsius.

Xenon is cool because it is very unreactive. Xenon is used in certain specialized light sources. It produces a beautiful blue glow when excited by an electrical discharge.

Xenon lamps have applications as high-speed electronic flash bulbs used by photographers, sunbed lamps, and bactericidal lamps used in food preparation and processing.

My favorite noble gas, it glows violet and anything in nature that's violet like that is exquisite. It also can form compounds unlike most other noble gases.

Coolest name too, sounds like an alien substance.

Overall, a fun element. I love its name, its placement, and all halogens. It's the rarest naturally occurring element, the decay product of two amazing elements, and it's still radioactive, which I love.

It's the most "balanced" element, in my opinion, and what I mean by that is it is almost impossibly perfect. Everything I want out of an element is here.

In my opinion, Astatine must be number 1. It belongs to the same group as that of Halogens like Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, and Iodine, but is completely different from them. It is extremely radioactive and is a product of nuclear decay. Only 31 grams of Astatine are known to be present in the Earth.

Osmium looks like a mana shard from some fantasy RPG, but instead of giving you more mana, it will just form osmium tetroxide, which is super poisonous.

Heavy, looks cool, rare, poisonous. Just generally has a lot of cool stuff going for it.

This should be way higher up. Without silicon semiconductors, this list would not be possible.

Oh, what would you do without glass? Glass is 75 percent made of SiO2.

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor.

While it's known for its dark past, a compound of arsenic, Gallium Arsenide, is used in the most efficient solar panels.

Very interesting and poisonous element. Killed many people throughout history but also took care of pests.

Hydrogen starts with the best letter and is the first element. An entire system is based on its concentration, pH, giving rise to acidity and basicity. All of which are based on whether a molecule donates or accepts H+. Oh, and H+ is basically just a proton. No wonder it is attracted to other atoms with all their juicy electrons.

And talk about romantic. One of the strongest acceptors of H+ is, in fact, hydride, H-. Two hydrogen atoms can always find their way back to each other. An even better love story than...

Forms common molecules with most non-metals, ranging from hydrogen fluoride to borane, including some of the most important chemicals: water, ammonia, and methane.

Did you know three atoms can share two electrons? Well, hydrogen can. Three hydrogen atoms and two electrons form a trihydrogen cation. It's in the game.

But hydrogen reacts with oxygen to form nasty pollutants just like other compounds. Oh wait, the only gas produced from the combustion of hydrogen is water. That's not so bad, I guess. Although it is a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, guess we will have to drink it then.

So yeah. Let's be real. Hydrogen is the best element. Now all we have to do is find a nice carbon or oxygen atom to bond it with, and then our little hydrogen atom will have a friend for the rest of its days.