January 2, 2019
"Choose an element and write a poem or story that uses that word in one of the lines."
___________________________________
A hundred and three elements in the periodic table and I have to pick one, that is not easy but then I tried. I first saw how many I remembered, quite a few, to my surprise but none seemed to 'call' to me. Then I opened another table where the full names were given (it appears that quite a few elements have made their place in the table behind my back) when I struck a cord with Element no. 4 - Beryllium (Be) because I recalled an Isaac Asimov SciFi story - Sucker Bait (where the soil and plants have a high concentration of beryllium and that is what killed all the scientists, on the previous expedition. The fact that beryllium is highly poisonous and the commercial use of beryllium requires the use of appropriate dust control equipment and industrial controls at all times because of the toxicity of inhaled beryllium-containing dusts that can cause a chronic life-threatening allergic disease in some people called berylliosis . This bring to mind that I retain what I read in stories better than what my chemistry text books set out - maybe I could start a revolutionary method of education)
Another interesting fact is that emeralds, that beautiful green gemstones composed of Beryl (which is beryllium aluminium cyclosilicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2Si6O18) and are believed to have healing rays (contradictory right, for Beryl is the ore source for Beryllium.
The most interesting thing (which I found on Wikipedia) is the etymology of Beryllium 'Early precursors of the word beryllium can be traced to many languages, including Latin beryllus; French béry; Ancient Greek βήρυλλος, bērullos, 'beryl'; Prakrit वॆरुलिय (veruliya); Pāli वेलुरिय (veḷuriya), भेलिरु (veḷiru) or भिलर् (viḷar) – "to become pale", in reference to the pale semiprecious gemstone beryl. The original source is probably the Sanskrit word वैडूर्य (vaidurya), which is of South Indian origin and could be related to the name of the modern city of Belur. For about 160 years, beryllium was also known as glucinum or glucinium (with the accompanying chemical symbol "Gl", or "G" ), the name coming from the Ancient Greek word for sweet: γλυκύς, due to the sweet taste of beryllium salts.
Interesting history for an element that rarely occurs in nature and is responsible for quite a few gemstones (apart from the famous emeralds, we have aquamarines, red beryl and golden beryl too.)
And I completely missed the prompt, but I cannot think of a poem and am too tired to write a story.
_____________________________________
Word count - 416
YOU ARE READING
365 Days - Book II
RandomThis is my collection of writings for the three hundred and sixty five day writing challenge - where one has to write something daily, every day, for one whole year, based on the prompts provided - as part of an exercise to improve creative writing...
