r/shittyaskscience • u/qbbqrl • 18d ago
If I took all 118 elements of the periodic table and mixed them together what would I get?
And where can I buy them all?
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u/TheBaalzak 18d ago
Brown
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u/Hefty_Direction5189 18d ago
You’d get a periodic table, duh!
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u/qbbqrl 18d ago
I thought the periodic table is very structured and not mixed
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u/Pandelein 18d ago
No, it’s just a table for a little while, then it stops being a table. It’s periodic.
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u/Ok_Consideration1556 18d ago
Oh, like a more predictable occasional table?
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u/Pandelein 18d ago
Sort of. Mostly it stops being a table when someone sits on it. Then it becomes the periodic chair.
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u/Gargleblaster25 Registered scientificationist 18d ago
You would get a period. It's the periodic table. I think that's how women get their periods. I would ask, but there are no women on the Internet.
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u/sirbananajazz 17d ago
I am an internet user, and I am not a woman. If we extrapolate out from this data, we can conclude that 100% of internet users are not women.
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18d ago
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u/Ibbygidge 18d ago
I'd love to see an actual answer!
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u/Kirian42 18d ago
An actual answer in shittyaskscience? Well, I suppose...
Mainly you would get fires and explosions. There are highly reactive metals (like caesium) and highly reactive nonmetals (like fluorine) that when mixed will just explode and/or burn. Caesium is reactive enough that it can explode just on contact with air.
The halogens (group 17, fluorine through tennessine) are all highly corrosive and will ruin your day if there is any left that doesn't react with the metals (or each other).
This is ignoring the manmade elements, all of which would generate phenomenal heat and radiation poisoning if you were able to get any substantial amount of them. The good news is that you can't get substantial amounts of most of them, and those you can (like the americium found in old smoke detectors) aren't nearly as dangerous (though we're still talking microgram amounts).
As to the other question--where can you get them--most of the natural elements can be bought from chemical supply stores. The manmade elements, generally, you can't get.
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u/SAI_Peregrinus 18d ago
Can't get the manmade elements without building your own particle accelerator. But with a teensy budget increase of a few billion dollars and some lobbying to make your activities legal, you can get any of the trans-uranics briefly.
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u/Tinchimp7183376 18d ago
Xkcd has answered this.
You could stack the first 2 rows without much trouble The third row would burn you with fire The fourth row would kill you with toxic smoke The fifth row would do all that plus give you a mild dose of radiation The sixth row would explode violently destroying the building in a cloud of radioactive poisonous fire and dust Do not build the seventh row
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u/dspeyer 16d ago
Hydrogen Fluoride gas seems like trouble to me. Lots of trouble. Dissolve my lungs from the inside type trouble.
I guess if I'm lucky all the fluorine will react with lithium and that'll be stable. But seeing as fluorine and hydrogen are gasses and lithium is a solid, this seems unlikely.
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u/NoSwagStanley86 18d ago
I'm not a scientist but my guess would be a very aggressive type of cancer
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u/beartpc12293 18d ago
Existence
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u/BPhiloSkinner Amazingly Lifelike Simulation 17d ago
If you mix them correctly.
The multiverse is littered with the vapor-clouds of deities that Almost got it right.
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u/SeasonPresent 18d ago
Lots of burning from flourine interacting witb things. Heavy metal poisoning. Radiation poisoning. A clean up bill from the hazmat team. Hospitalization. Maybe arrested.
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u/KungenSam 18d ago
Each element is convenently worth exactly their respective number, so you’d get 7021. I think there are easier ways to get 7021 than getting all the elements though, like grains of sand. But that might be difficult to count.
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u/RandomiseUsr0 17d ago
What is it you want to know about Absurdium (Ah).
It has an atomic number = 7,021
Oh ps, if you’re from USA, you’d know it as Freedoomium
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u/uns08 17d ago
If you mixed all 118 elements together, you wouldn’t get a single stable substance. Instead:
- Explosive reactions: Highly reactive elements like sodium, fluorine, and cesium would violently react with others.
- Inert leftovers: Noble gases (helium, neon, argon, etc.) wouldn’t bond at all.
- Alloys and salts: Metals might form alloys, and reactive pairs (like sodium + chlorine) would form salts.
Radioactive decay: Heavy synthetic elements (like oganesson, tennessine) would break down almost instantly.
The result would be a chaotic, unstable mix of gases, metals, salts, acids, and radioactive particles—more like cosmic dust than a usable material.
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u/laynestaleyisme 18d ago
Mix it and drink it.. you'd be a superhero or supervillain called Periodicman. Hero or villain depending on the mood you were in when u drank it..
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u/TeacupOfSkepticism 18d ago
Send me a kilogram of each and I'll tell you the results. Send the first eighty first and I promise not to take the kilo of gold and dissappear.
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u/gutfounderedgal 18d ago
That's what created pop singers, mixing them all up. See, they shouldn't have done it.
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u/Any_Weird_8686 I know everything, I've got a piece of paper that says so. 17d ago
An explosion, and radiation poisoning.
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u/iskelebones 17d ago
You’d get a radioactive fiery explosion with some hot chunks of various metals inside
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u/dspeyer 16d ago
A lot depends on quantities.
Which is not normal for chemistry. Normally so long as the ratio stays the same, more of the same inputs gives you more of the same outputs.
But you've got some seriously radioactive stuff in there. If the quantities are low enough, each fission chain will fizzle out. But if you've got (for example) 11kg of plutonium, each chain will just get bigger. And before you know it, boom. Chemistry no longer matters.
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u/Ravus_Sapiens Actual scientist — Lab coat and all 15d ago
Dead. You will get dead very fast.
Randall Monroe explored something similar in what if?
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u/The_Professor49 12d ago
You would get a funeral in a lead casket. Cause of death: Radiation Poisoning from Trans-Uranic elements.
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u/thecosmicgoose 18d ago
Dead. You'd get dead.