This is a major achievement that we’re very proud to offer!

You and I and most everyone in the world is familiar with iodine in the form of a smelly brown disinfectant smeared over minor cuts and scraped knees. But in this case it’s only a liquid because it’s dissolved in alcohol and other solvents. Under controlled conditions it will form into dark crystals that have tiny shiny facets but left unaided in open air it quickly evaporates in noxious clouds that will stain everything in its way. Even when left in a well-sealed bottle even a tiny leak will be all that’s needed for the contents to peter out into the ether. If iodine had a soul you’d be convinced that it resisted with all its might being trapped in confinement of any sort.

All this preamble to drive home the point that it is very unusual to coax this stuff to take any sort of permanent shape but supremely so to get it to assume even the humble geometry of a cubic centimeter.

Since the vapor pressure is very high (0.4 atmospheres) the starting point of this project from the engineering perspective has to take into account what to do with all the noxious vapor that forms as you apply heat with the intent of melting iodine. Fully half turns to purple smoke so thick that it prevents one from seeing where the liquid even is. But that’s the least of it. Upon lowering the temperature the liquid which does find its way into a mold - which by the way has to be made from special materials that this very reactive element won’t attack chemically - the condensate that forms is obstinate enough to harden in unexpected ways that defy the operator’s intent. Cracks, ugly pockmarks, rough edges, bizarre crystallization effects and so on all play their part in thwarting the seemingly simple objective of filling the stupid cube. In one final raised middle finger to the tech whose sorry job is to deliver these cubes, the iodine will shrink by approximately 20% as it cools adding thus another complexity for the project that requires a strict 10mm dimension with a tight margin of error.

With much effort and small tweaks of adjustments the result was finally achieved and here, fully five years into the start of our quest, we finally add the 64th element to our collection.

The costly research and the repeated cycles of failure have turned what should ordinarily be a couple dollars’ worth of iodine into a collectible that, unfortunately, few will be able to afford. It’s our hope that processes yet to be fine-tuned will eventually yield much lower costs so that more may enjoy having a little of this quirky chemical in this very un-natural format.

As is the case with other reactive elements, each iodine cube will come housed in a glass ampule to both protect its delicate contours and prevent the hazards of other elements from interacting with it. Although some may disagree, we find the traces of iodine on the interior walls of the ampule, and even the presence of tiny crystals, an appealing aesthetic that adds to the mystery and confirms the squirrelly, incompliant nature unique to this element. On the other hand, as noted above, if the glass were to break, the cube would disappear in very strongly odorous clouds and out the window would go a lot of your hard earned money. Treat it therefore with care to prevent such a tragedy :-)