Originally published at: Watch a man chew Indium like it's bubblegum | Boing Boing
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It’s likely also the most expensive chewing gum in the universe…
The fibrous allotrope of sulfur (Sn) also has a chewing-gum consistency and is non-toxic.
(Some water-soluble sulfur allotropes are laxatives but you’d still have to eat them)
Tenzil Kem has entered the thread.
He obviously doesn’t have any metallic fillings. I know this from chewing on aluminum foil as a kid and finding about bimetallic reactions…
I hope the other 0.005% isn’t mercury.
Fellow mutants of the germanophone persuasion:
If any of you could find out who adapted Tom Lehrer’s song as Can-can der Elemente and provide me with the source, I would be so immensely relieved, I’ll send you a bottle of my best Sloe Gin. Or a bottle of whisky. Or something else which I can send, legally.
I never chewed Indium in school, but I think we had some. Our chemistry lab was really well stocked. And I liked chemistry. It made sense, in a way other subjects didn’t. So, I was thrilled when I heard someone sing the periodic table to the melody of the Can Can on the radio, and told my teacher about it. I think I even gave her my recording of the program. Which I never got back.
But for the life of me, I could not find out later who sang and played that. I thought it would have been Franz Hohler, but I actually asked him - and his office replied he could not remember ever to have sung this.
My memory is very specific. But I was unable to track the track down.
I cannot listen to any of Lehrer’s or Hohler’s songs without thinking about this. Furthermore, it pops into my mind when I think about the periodic table, cabaret, or school chemistry, and on quite a bit of other occasions.
Ok, maybe I am a bit weird, but I really, really want to listen to that song again and find out who did it. I need the closure. So: anyone?
Please?
ETA: colour me stupid, but is his point here
that it’s n°49 (like, 49 out of 50, 9/10)? Or 9 out of tin? What?
And what would it taste like?
What if you leave it on the bedpost overnight?
OK. You wanna impress me? Blow an indium bubble.
This is pretty likely it! Thank you! I remember it slightly differently, but the Fluor-Chlor-Brom-Bor line stuck in my head for DECADES.