Chemist here: all the reds are correct but it would take so much time to explain why so many of the greens are super concerning. Every time I see this reposted it’s so concerning…I should just spend the 17 minutes and save a copy pasta response of everything horribly wrong with this.
Edit: page 1 on the SDS for pure sulfur.
I’m pretty sure that licking pure magnesium would make your tongue explode too.
I would not be willing to lick calcium, too
Definitely not licking pure lithium, sodium, or any of the alkali (s-block) metals. My tongue is wet. That shit explodes in water, yo.
I wonder if you’d get a sort of leidenfrost effect limiting the extent of damage.
I’m not going to test that though.
Magnesium is fine (see response above). https://invidious.darkness.services/watch?v=Q_4I30Nz_b0 Just don’t vomit on it before you lick it, 'cause it’ll get spicy with acid.
Mg is an alkaline earth metal, not an alkali metal. :). Still have zero desire whatsoever to eat elemental Mg.
But I did say s-block didn’t I. That’s on me, I set the bar too low.
Yeah, the only reason I replied was because you were responding to the calcium dude above, then said “s-block”. Just wanted to spread the good word of the 9th-most abundant element in the universe 🙏
Frankly I’m amazed I even got as much of that right as I did. It’s been more than 20 years since I took a chemistry class—a lot of them—but still. It’s been a minute.
I have elemental magnesium (4 ~50g ingots, I keep it in my library in a barely-sealed ziplock). it’s shelf stable and doesn’t react violently with water. Want me to try licking it and let you know? (hint: at worst it’ll make a minuscule amount of milk of magnesia)
ETA: Would I stick my tongue in pyrophoric magnesium powder? No, and you wouldn’t do that with pyrophoric aluminum or zinc powders, either, but that doesn’t stop me from using (or licking) alumnum foil. Proof: https://invidious.darkness.services/watch?v=Q_4I30Nz_b0
My degree is in bio but if I’m remembering my coursework correctly, this is the legend that’s supposed to be on it.
If someone’s licking any of the transuranic elements I’m not sticking around to watch.
Some stuff should simply not exist in a lickable quantity.
I see we’re continuing the trend of scaring literally everyone when a scientist gets excited.
From my elementary knowledge of chemistry:
I had to go looking for Mercury and Lead and sure enough they look about right.
Column 1 reacts with water so you bet that’ll hurt. Hydrogen needs a boost to start reacting with oxygen so no naked flame is recommended.
Anything in column 7 are desperate to rip electrons away from molecules so yes, permanent damage to your tongue and mouth.
Uranium is alright if you lick it once. A guy ate uranium cake once on TV.
The ‘Please reconsider’ lot seem to be a good way to die a horrible death by radiation.
Tc I believe is technetium which is radioactive and emits gamma rays, perhaps not soluable so stays in your body and you become gamma-man.
Needs a “how fast can you move your tongue?” label for the unstable elements.
“Please, tell me how!”
Is it really that bad to lick something that disappears after nanoseconds?
Lol. I meant to accomplish the lick, in the first place.
I have no real sense of the likely consequences, other than “probably not great”.
Elemental mercury isn’t very bioavailable so licking the surface of a pool of mercury isn’t going to hurt you much if at all. (Assuming you just do it once). Plus the density of mercury is going make it hard for you to slurp up a significant quantity the stuff anyway.
If you want to know about the horrible potential for mercury to mess you up look for stories about dimethyl mercury exposure. Its the fat soluble varieties that give mercury it’s reputation.
The story of the professor who was studying dimethyl mercury is terrifying
:( oh no now I must search for it
Chubbyemus take on it was pretty good
Ahh good old chubbyemu. I did read it from Wikipedia though, I found it really sad and tragic
i’m not a chemist but is this licking the most common molecule form or the atomic variety
O₂ is safe but i don’t think O is
I think it’s framed in the context of: “How dangerous would a single molecule be to a human?”. In that context, I would say
Ois safe, only because our body naturally destroys the radical oxygen molecules every day that we create with our anti-oxidants.True, in a larger quantity than our body can handle, it’s extremely toxic; but a single molecule would probably not be too bad.
But I do agree, it shouldn’t be Green. It should be Yellow at least.
I’m no chemist but - can you lick a gas?
Edit: pick
Define “lick”.
Just freeze them
If you lick anything at minus 200, you’re going to have a bad time.
You can lick liquid nitrogen, that’s pretty close
Can you really?
You can stick your tongue in it. Wouldn’t recommend actually trying to get anything in your mouth.
You’re protected by the thin layer of nitrogen that immediately sublimates, this lasts until the nitrogen heats up so the liquid can touch you directly, which you want to avoid.
For mostly the same reason you can stick a finger into molten lead (without losing said finger), provided you do it fast enough and your finger is wet enough.
You’ve never seen the trick where you put a small amount of liquid nitrogen in your mouth to demonstrate… science, IDK something to do with lederhosen?
Don’t swallow it though, then you’ll get a perforated stomach.
I’m not entirely sure that’s completely accurate…
Guess I’m built different then
Your tongue is definitely gonna stick to it.
Same concern. It’s even arguable you can only lick solids (and lap liquids). This would make hydrogen a Must Not Lick, for example, if we could only consider solid forms.
Too distracted by the misspelling in the title
you can always answer how likable they are?
Mid at best. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t want anywhere near your mouth on there.
Licking bismuth would be very very very very very bad
Why? Bismuth is pretty harmless from what I can find. It’s not great but it’s way better than lead (which it replaced in a lot of applications). Based on what I read, bismuth probably wouldn’t hurt you if you gave it a lick.
Are you thinking of benzene?
Mfer I’ll go lick my rainbow Lovecraftian City looking rocks right now to spite you
Bismuth bangers 4 lyfe
Listen to this guy. He’s serious bismuth
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Beryllium is mostly only toxic when you breathe it in (there’s even a special disease you get from it), but as a solid, it’s pretty safe afaik.
Not that I recommend it.
Since the green isn’t labelled “yes you can” I stopped reading…
I mean, technically you can lick any of them…
(Once)
Can you, though? Can you lick a gas? Am I licking the atmosphere when I stick my tongue out?
Plenty of them are also so rare that there isn’t enough of them to form any lickable matter; solid, liquid or gaseous.
Some have such an incredibly short half-life, you cannot lick it before it decays into something else.
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Yes you can lick a gas. Have you ever tasted a fart?
lol You don’t need a table to tell you whether or not you should like an element. Like ‘em all! Also, whoever made the pic misspelled “like” as “lick”. jsyk.
Lead should be red
lead’s bad for you, sure, but when some of the other metals on this scale’s red might literally explode your tongue/face/head depending on sample size and saliva accumulation, i’d say yellow fits it pretty well.
Nah, metallic lead is pretty solid. Licking it doesn’t really do much. You shouldn’t ingest lead, but you don’t really ingest it by licking a piece of metal.
Same with metallic mercury. But once it evaporates…
Well, when you lick mercury, you’re actually going to swallow a lot of it. Thankfully, you’ll poop most of it out, and as long as you do it once, it won’t kill you.
But if I had to pick between licking lead or mercury, I’d go with lead.
Oh yeah. I am om team lead. The problem with Mercury is the vapor that ridiculously easy methylates when heated, and then you have a nerve toxin that quite easily crosses the blood-brain barrier.
Idk, just licking it once shouldn’t do much harm, right?
Given the choice between licking mercury and licking lead, 96% of respondents answered with lead.
Apologies for the random percentage and quoting fictional data.
look at this shill from the big metal licking industry
There is no identified threshold or safe level of lead in blood” [AAP 2016]
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/leadtoxicity/physiological_effects.html
I’d call that “you really shouldn’t” for an adult, and for a baby I’d tell them to “please reconsider” for sure
I have a toddler and I hope to dear god there’s no lead about. She will lick anything.
It isn’t safe at any dose but the amount of harm from licking it once is definitely rather small. Probably safer than having a couple of alcoholic drinks or a single cigarette.
The inside of your mouth is on the outside of your body and so is the rest of your digestive tract, safely (well) isolated (unless it’s permeable) from your bloodstream. As a first approximation, our bodies are toruses. Just licking something is really not much more intimate than touching something unless it’s sugar which can be taken up right there on the spot. (At least glucose can and there’s enzymes in salvia don’t ask me for details).
All that said the Romans used lead(II) acetate as a sweetener and while definitely a bad idea, they didn’t all immediately keel over either. You’ll almost certainly be fine.
Pure water OTOH… you’ll burn your mouth because osmotic pressure tearing cell walls apart before the stuff dilutes to have a sensible amount of minerals in it. The tissue there is used to sudden violent cell death and heals quickly so no biggie, if you survived a too hot pizza you’ll survive water. Also, do eat that pizza to have enough minerals to replenish everything.
