Silicon is the easiest element to acquire in ultra-pure form. The necessity of atomically flawless silicon for the making of microchips has seen the electronics industry perfecting the techniques necessary to not only achieve the heady purity levels needed but also scale up the production to the point that they’ve become items affordable even to the poorest in the developing world. Usually only a thin, millimeter-thick sliver, these chips have all the circuitry lasered onto one surface and then packaged in plastic and plastered with soldered contacts all around.

Here is an altogether different type. Unlike virtually every other piece of silicon in existence, this single crystal rod was expressly grown as a collectible and then housed in an airtight dome to protect it. How cool is that?