Just as tungsten makes for a wow experience when someone first holds it because of its unexpected heft, calcium can do the same for the opposite reason. When first picking up this sizeable sample your brain may subconsciously prepare by tensing your hand’s muscles in expectation of a commensurate force needed to lift it. Instead you quickly notice your hand lifts rather effortlessly!

In addition to being ethereally light, calcium makes some seriously trippy structures when its atoms, free from the bother of other chemistry interfering with it, is allowed to grow according to its own inner recipe. The resulting jumble of columns and planes are scarred and fractured born of internal forces that even a physicist might strain to fully understand. This is truly an amazing presentation piece!