ELEMENT RESEARCH!

The next project is to illustrate an element from the Periodic Table. I'm not big on science, and I don't really know a whole lot about a lot of them, but we have to research them, so whatever.

I had absolutely NO clue which elements I was interested in, but after browsing, I was able to think of a few. We need to develop little thought maps about the element, making personal connections and also finding out about the history or mythology surrounding it, and so far I only have a few connections that I've made.

-Arsenic: Arsenic was the first I thought of because I felt like it was easier to make arsenic more narrative and personal. Also, from what I can remember, when they tried to kill Rasputin in Russia, they gave him cyanide (and I thought maybe arsenic, but just cyanide). Okay, Arsenic is out of the question.

OKAY, but Rasputin has a SUPER crazy death story! I remember from my World Civ. class sophomore year of high school. My teacher was obsessed with Russia, so we learned everything from the beginnings of Russia to the Cold War.

So that leaves me with either Carbon or Nitrogen, because they are the things that make up cyanide, and Rasputin's murder is just waaaaaay too crazy to be ignored.

-Carbon: Now in the running for my element. See above.
-Mercury: I have no personal connections with mercury, but I remember that my mom said that when she was a kid, my grandma would break thermometers and let her and her siblings play with the mercury from the thermometer. Apparently it all holds together... I guess like silly putty! Sort of, only more toxic?  HA!
-Silver: A lot of people might pick this one, and it seems generic, but not only is silver used in jewelry, but vampires and werewolves are weak against silver! Silver bullets! Silver for photographs, which vampires supposedly cannot be detected on! But I would have to do other research about silver as well...
-Gold: Gold is also very generic, also used in jewelry, but when I thought of gold, I thought of something we had talked about in Gothic Literature recently: The philosopher's stone, which was a stone said to be able to turn lead into gold. And... ALCHEMY! I don't know much about alchemy (unless I think of whatever I remember from Fullmetal Alchemist, but the second I bring up an anime in Illustration 2 will be the day my life ends because I will probably be shot by everyone in the class).
HOWEVER!!! When I was researching gold on one of the links provided by my teacher, I discovered that GOLD is found in SEA WATER!! A man by the name of Fritz Haber researched this extensively after World War I, because he wanted to find a way to extract the gold so Germany could pay off its war debts (which I find quite interesting and QUITE hilarious). So Fritz here took to trying to figure out how much gold is dissolved in sea water, and based on current estimations, there are apparently 13.7 million tons of gold in sea water, yet NO WAY as of yet to extract it.

As of now, I think my favorite options would probably be Carbon and Gold. We'll just have to see.