Meet the Chemiballs: the Postal Post Transition Metals
The post transition metals are pretty much what they say on the tin. No, these aren’t post-op transgender metals, they’re the metals that come after the transition metals on the periodic table. An actual definition would be that they are metallic elements with a p valence orbital. As opposed to the transition metals which have d valence orbitals. The difference in orbital has to do with the shape of the outermost electron cloud. But that’s getting into quantum physics hoodoo, which is someone else’s blog. So let’s move on.
I left out the group 7 post transition metals because their practical chemistry is nonexistent since they decay in less than a second. Many outdated periodic tables probably don’t even have them.
Table of Contents:
Aluminum: the Lightest Post Transition Metal
Aluminumball is a metal. It’s also pretty abundant, tarnish-resistant, and lightweight. These all make it super useful to humans. Sure, he may not be as strong as titaniumball, but he’s even lighter and cheaper. Sure, he may not be quite as light as berylliumball, but beryllium is pretty rare and reactive. It’s no wonder aluminum is used for everything from planes to cans.
Something you may have noticed about aluminum foil is that it doesn’t rust or visibly tarnish no matter how many soggy casseroles you stuff in it. That’s not because it’s unreactive or chemically stable like silver or gold. In fact, it does tarnish when exposed to oxygen and does so very quickly. But the aluminum oxide doesn’t expand or break apart like iron oxide. It creates a sealing layer that protects the aluminum metal underneath from oxygenballs in the air. Even if you scratch off the layer of aluminum oxide, a new layer will form underneath. This is similar to stainless steel which uses a layer of chromium oxide to protect the iron-chromium alloy underneath.
The British say we Americans pronounce aluminum wrong and that it’s actually “aluminium”. I mean, yeah, they’re probably right. It would make more sense to have the same -ium suffix as all the other metals. Therefore, for the sake of consistency, I propose Americans should just start pronouncing all the other -ium elements wrong as well. Like sodum, potassum, helum, osmum, calcum, titanum, uranum, etc. Which is very fun to say out loud. Uranum!
For more fun, we should also pronounce platinum and tantalum as platinium and tantalium. After all, what’s more quintessentially American than annoying the English and perverting their language?
Gallium: Mercury’s Non-Evil Twin
Gallum is cool. It’s actually named after the Roman word “Gaul” for the region we now call France. (Charles de Gaulle translates to “Charley from France”). This means that there are two elements named after the land of baguette eaters (the other being Francium). Then again we hotdog suckers get americum, californum, tennessine, and berkelum (named after the American city Berkely) so we shouldn’t really complain.
Gallum is pretty useful and interesting. Remember how in the transition metal post I said that mercury is super unique and has very special properties? Well, joke’s on you ‘cause gallum can do most of that while not being toxic.
Your periodic table, of which I expect you to own several and study every day, probably lists gallum as a solid element. But that’s just based on if it’s solid at room temperature. Gallum’s melting point is just slightly above room temperature. You can even melt it with your body heat.
In its liquid phase, gallum’s properties are similar to mercury. Since gallum isn’t poisonous, this means we can use it for many of the applications we would use mercury in without getting brain damage. Unfortunately, mercury is still generally more useful in several applications such as a reactant, so we can’t replace it entirely.
Indium: The Indigo-est Post Transition Metal
Guess what indum is named after.
Did you guess India? Well, sorry to break it to you if you’re an Indian indium stan, but you’re wrong. Indum is named after indigo. The color. Because it makes indigo colored smoke when you burn it. India doesn’t have an element, which is unfortunate when you consider that Indians have contributed a lot more to science than heckin’ Tennesseans.
Both Indumball and Tinball also make little noises described as crying or screaming when you bend them. This is due to its twinning crystals. Basically, there are microscopic crystal structures in the metal, as is the case with nearly all metals. But these crystals happen to grow in such a way that they mirror each other and often intersect. Which leads to the sorrowful-noise emitting damage to the crystal lattice somehow. What’s not to love?
According to Wikipedia, the chad of sources, indum is the softest metal that is not an alkali metal. It also resembles tin in appearance. Cool, that means I can trace one over the other to cut corners. That means I’ll have time to do thallium!
Thallium: The Most Toxic Post Transition Metal
Thallum is super poisonous and makes your hair fall out. It doesn’t really have a ton of uses beyond this. And honestly, if you’re looking to murder someone using a toxic heavy metal, you can do a lot better with arsenic. Not that I’m giving this as murder advice. I still prefer teleporting my nemeses to the distant past.
The name comes from the Greek word for “green twig” or something like that. This is because it was discovered by the distinctive thin green band it produces in spectroscopy.
Spectroscopy is a cool scifi way chemists can use to analyze chemicals by shooting lasers and x-rays at them or something, it’s pretty cool. I approve of shooting things with lasers. Thallum is so rare and relatively reactive that it’s easier to discover it as a trace contaminant of random minerals than to isolate the actual metal.
Tin: The Most Normal Post Transition Metal
Apparently, the “Sn” symbol comes from the Latin name for tin “stannum”. That’s actually stannum, not stannium. Though maybe we should pronounce it that way.
This also explains why lots of tin compounds are called “stannous oxide” or some shit. Personally, I think stan is a much better name than tin. I stan stan.
It’s a fairly easy and cheap metal to extract. This is why it was used to make cans and toy soldiers in the past. It’s so easy to mine that people from the bronze age mixed it with copper to make bronze. Bronze is like copper but slightly less soft, meaning you can make short swords and stuff out of it. Pretty shitty swords that dull quickly, but still better than the alternative of literally fighting with sticks and stones.
Tin deposits are actually pretty regional. There are only a few places in the world where you can get tin.
The most unique thing about tin is “tin pest”. Tin metal likes to turn into dust if it gets too cold. This was very unfortunate for Napoleon’s army during the Russian winter, whose uniforms used tin buttons, when all their pants fell down. I’ve depicted Tinball getting Thanos snapped to reference this. I tried to draw him as that crying emoji, but realized that’s pretty tough when chemiballs don’t have hands or mouths.
Lead: It’s Lead
Lead is a special element, more than you may realize. Though to understand that I’ll need to explain a bit about radioactive decay. The further down the periodic table you go the more unstable elements generally are. Lead is the heaviest element that isn’t unstable. Well, actually that’s bismuth. But because of the way radioactive decay works and the uranium decay series, a lot more lead exists.
Pretty much every element heavier than lead and bismuth will eventually decay into one of them, leading to there being a lot more of those two elements than you would expect for such heavy elements.
Lead is pretty bad for humans because humans are very stupid. Not the human brain, at least not usually. In this case, it’s the human metabolic pathways that are stupid. They think that lead looks like calcum and will put it into your bones. But it is not calcum, and will proceed to leak out over the following years. It also makes the brain stupid because it gets confused for calcium ions, among some other effects.
In the past, people thought it was a good idea to put a chemiball named tetraethyl lead in gasoline to make engines run smoother, quieter, and more efficiently. There are lots of chemiballs that can do this without filling the car exhaust with toxic heavy metals and polluting the atmosphere. But tetraethyl lead was the cheapest. So, knowing that this would absolutely give most people on earth a minor case of lead poisoning, the crazy-mad scientists at the Ethyl company did it anyway. And for years no one bothered to stop them.
Luckily, a scientist who was barely mad at all eventually realized that giving everyone lead poisoning is bad if you want to have a functioning society. So of course they immediately banned it and sued the Ethyl company… What’s this? They got away with it scot free? The last country to ban leaded petrol was Algeria in 2021? BUT THEY STARTED USING IT IN 1923! WE’VE BEEN GIVING CHILDREN BRAIN DAMAGE FOR ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS? WTF?
I’m literally an evil supervillain and I even think that’s messed up. <slow clap>
Bismuth: The Gayest Post Transition Metal
I’ve thought long and hard about how to describe bismuth in a better way than the somewhat mad scientist Tom from Explosions&Fire. But I can’t, so I’m just gonna plagiarize quote him.
“[Bismuth] has seen a bit of a revival lately as a bit of a ‘relatable icon element’ because it forms rainbows all the time, doesn’t like to be straight, and is incredibly dense.
Personally, I’ve always thought of bismuth as lead for people who fear death.” -Tom
Anyways, Bismuth is the heaviest stable element and makes some pretty amazing crystals. The rainbow colors come from its oxides with forms of varying thicknesses on its surface which interact with light differently. Its physical properties are pretty similar to lead and can be used in many of the same applications. But, critically, it’s not poison.
Addendum
I drew all these. As I am a firm believer in freedom of info on the internet, I give anyone permission to do whatever they want with them. Copy, repost, modify, etc, I don’t care.
These are all poor-quality Jpegs because I value the page load speed of mobile users, and also because of a subversive plot to direct people to my social media. For higher quality versions check out this Reddit post. For more Chemiball stuff, check out r/Chemiballs. This is a shockingly obscure community and deserves more attention.
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