SCIENCE! What is the Rarest Precious Metal?

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here.

And I'm in Anaheim at VidCon. I hope to see some of you here, because I

like you guys. But I can't marry all of you.

But if I did put a ring on it, what is the most precious thing you could make that ring

out of? Silver, gold, platinum.

Those are all fine, but I wanna know what is the rarest, most scarce thing on Earth

that's stable and safe to wear I could make that ring out of.

And I want it to be pure. I'm talking elemental.

Well, luckily, I recently went to the University of Nottingham, home of Periodic Videos and

experimented with some elements. First things first, zinc dissolved in mercury.

This stuff is awesome, it's dense, it's heavy, it's liquid metal.

It's cool, but even cooler is human urine. Thank you Neil.

Of course I am just kidding. This is an aqueous solution of the metal vanadium.

And when we mix vanadium in with the mercury and the zinc, the mercury helps the zinc give

electrons to the vanadium. And is it gains more and more electrons, it

changes colour. We're looking for purple.

I love shaking this, it's crazy, it's like throwing me off balance.

It's so heavy. Look at that.