Bismuth, a very neat looking little element, is one of those things in life that went largely unrecognized for a long time, until the world wised up and started to take notice. I like that, because it means bismuth was an underdog and I’m a Tennessee Titans fan, so I can relate to that. Because it can be a little ambiguous looking, historically bismuth was often confused with either lead or tin. By the mid-1700s, however, a man named Claude Geoffroy the Younger discerned the difference and bismuth as an entity in the elemental world was born.
The reason I chose to write about bismuth was because of its peculiar radioactivity. It has the longest half life of any known element, clocking in at more than 20 billion years. To put that into perspective, consider this: in the time it takes bismuth to cycle through a single half life, our earth’s lifespan could have happened more than four times. Like, bismuth is radioactive, but fear not! Hold that element all you want; roll in it, grind it up and eat it (you actually can, we’ll get there in a second), go wild, because regardless of its radioactivity, us mortals are safe. We’ll never experience any of the negative effects of radioactive decay because…20 billion years, you know?
Now, if you recall, I mentioned something about ingesting bismuth. Sounds crazy, but bear with me–you actually can. Bismuth is often a primary ingredient in stomach medicines, for instance, Pepto-Bismol (I read that and my life was forever changed). I find it a little alarming and a little awesome that we ingest a radioactive element, and it helps us! I’m geeking out. Also, because I neglected to provide any earlier, here are some examples of what bismuth looks like. Pretty, right?
