I did not create this beautiful crystal.  But I did create the little square table on which it sits. Thus I have created a work of art.  That is all we do when we create any piece of art.  We use human energy, mental and physical, to rearrange the materials of the world into new forms that gratify our desire for beauty or some other esthetic.  

But you will say, it took almost no creativity or effort to create that little blue table (or is it green?)  To this I  respond,  “How do you know?”  Perhaps I spent hundreds of hours thinking about the size, shape, and color of that little table. Maybe I made a great many unsatisfactory tables that my artistic judgment found wanting before I came up with this one.   And who, I ask, decided that a small table (I think it is green) should be built on which to place this lovely crystal?  And who decided on the entire project—and by project I mean the decision to use a bismuth crystal, to place it on a little blue table, to painstakingly paint that table green, and to write about it here?

So I do declare:  The crystal, the table, the paint (blue?), the idea, the half-baked philosophy, and the writing about it here all taken together constitute a work of art.  I the artist ET Trigg made it.  You're welcome.

Bismuth is element number 83 in the periodic table.  It stands just to the right of lead, element number 82.  It is quite heavy and is sometimes used as a substitute for lead in applications where the toxicity of lead is a problem—in fishing sinkers for example.

It is the most naturally diamagnetic element.  That means that it is repelled by a magnet.  So theoretically bismuth could be used to create maglev trains that float above the tracks.

It has quite a low melting point for a metal.  You could melt it on your stovetop.  When it cools down again and solidifies it spontaneously forms these lovely crystals.

It is the heaviest element that is not radioactive.  Well actually—in 2003 they found out that it is faintly radioactive and has a half-life of 2 times 10 to the 19th years.   This means that, after 20 quintillion years, this lovely crystal will have shrunk to half of its size here.  So, like every beautiful thing, created by man or nature, we should treasure it while it still exists.