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 Reagent-grade metal.
Around 2001 Stephen Wolfram asked Ed Pegg and me if we could experiment with growing hopper crystals with bismuth. Ed bought some from Alfa Aesar and I brought in my small electric kiln to the office. We were able to create crystals almost immediately: Simply pouring into a stainless steel measuring cup, allowing to cool until the outer edge is solid, then pouring the center off is all it takes. We made several nice small hopper crystals, and it's obvious that one could make any number just by refining the conditions and using more bismuth.
See the fourth sample for a picture of one dish of crystals I made, along with a video showing how the liquid metal is poured off from the crystals.
Source: Alfa Aesar
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $100/Kg
Size: 2"
Purity: 99.9%
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 Eggs.
These lovely artificially grown bismuth eggs show what you can do if you learn to control the conditions of crystallization. Based on our experiments, I think it's safe to say these probably take just a few minutes each to make, once you get the system down.
Source: Mr. Bismuth
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $20
Size: 2"
Purity: >99%
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Small crystal, 99.999%.
Kindly donated by David Franco, who sent many elements after seeing the slashdot discussion, and this one after I sent him some Mathematica t-shirts.
This is a nice example of a hopper crystal. Not as big as our other samples, but much more pure of course, since it came from David.
Source: David Franco
Contributor: David Franco
Acquired: 11 June, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.999%
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  Home-grown crystals.
This small dish of crystals was made from the reagent-grade metal that is the first sample under bismuth. Ed Pegg and I had made several nicer ones long before, but I wanted to make a video showing how you let the metal partially harden, then pour off the still-molten center to reveal the crystals forming from the bottom and outside.
For some reason, this time the metal behaved quite differently. It may have become contaminated with enough of an impurity (lead?) to change its characteristics, or the difference may have had to do with the fact that I was using a plumber's propane torch to heat it, rather than an electric kiln as before.
(I wasn't exactly being careful to control the conditions, as making this video was another one of the things I had to do between bouts of child care.)
In any case, the biggest difference was that this time, it did not form the pretty colored oxide layers. Instead the metal stayed absolutely bright, forming only a dull gray oxide film that was easily skimmed off before it started cooling.
The other difference was that the crystals were smaller, though they were still obviously bismuth-shaped square hopper crystals. This is almost certainly due to less-clean cups and more contamination in the form of particles that initiate crystals from many places at once.
Still, I got a decent dish of crystals, and a decent video of it. Click the story book icon for more details on the procedure for making the crystals.
Source: Theodore Gray
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 August, 2002
Price: $10
Size: 2"
Purity: 99.9%
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Home-made bismuth.
I made some home-made bismuth crystals, but Tryggvi made home-made bismuth. He needed some bismuth metal one day, but only had some kind of bismuth salt. So he worked out a reaction and precipitated it, then he had bismuth metal.
Click the source link for an interesting story about where this sample came from.
Source: Tryggvi Emilsson and Timothy Brumleve
Contributor: Tryggvi Emilsson and Timothy Brumleve
Acquired: 6 September, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 1"
Purity: >99%
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Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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