The demonstration took a while: I had to grind, dissolve, filter, precipitate, and filter the stuff again. Not unlike the digestion process Pepto aids, you start with nice colorful morsels and end up with dark crud. For logistical reasons, I had not actually tried the method before we set up the photo shoot, so it was quite a joy when I first saw beads of liquid metal form as I heated the crud, telling me that we had not wasted an entire day on a wild bismuth chase.