Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Well, it's gallium. How do you give a bad review to an element? "Gosh golly, I ordered this gold and it turned out it was all yellow and soft. What a rip-off!" "They called it 'pure' potassium, but it turned all white when I exposed it to air, and when I accidentally flushed it down the toilet the pipes exploded! Zero stars! Don't waste your money on this stuff." "Love the radium, but I can only give it three stars because it caused horrible burns on my hands and gave my wife cancer." Gallium is what it is - a shiny silver metal with a melting point of just over 85 degrees F - and it gets five stars for it. You can play with it like mercury, but unlike mercury, there are no toxic fumes to kill your brain cells. It's not as dense as mercury; 100 grams will make a disk about two inches across and a quarter inch thick. For the home buyer, it's not useful for much but entertaining the kids and yourself. Another reviewer said it stains. What it does is make skin, formica, and some other materials "wet." Once they're wet, they don't get dry easily because gallium doesn't evaporate. It will turn your fingers gray. No big deal - skin wears away and the gallium with it. Your counter may not be so lucky, and I have absolutely no intention of seeing what this stuff will do to fabrics. Nothing good, I imagine. I melted mine into a plastic cup and left it in my office overnight. It hadn't solidified the next day, even though my office temperature was in the low 70s. I popped it in the freezer, and voila! A silvery hockey-puck. Put the cup in hot water and presto, you've got a liquid again in under an hour. I'm sure there are some fun science experiments to do with the stuff, or neat inventions if you're clever. I just enjoy it for what it is, a curiosity for my office to sit next to my Buckyball magnets, my fire-spitting wind-up nun, my musical LED top, my green laser, the rubber chicken that produces an egg out its rear when you squeeze it, and various puzzles, magnets, squishy things, nesting dolls, and other things to inspire me as I work.