Rubidium! Call her Rubi, for short. (actually, Rb) This sexy siren of an element, #37, is very soft BUT highly reactive (sound familiar?) Like the other alkali metals in her group #1, Rb rapidly oxidizes- and can possibly ignite- when exposed to air, and reacts violently in water. She may look silvery/grey/white at first, but hold her up to a flame or spectroscope and you'll see the color that lends its name, L. rubidus "deepest red."
Rubidium was discovered in 1861, in Germany, by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff in the mineral lepidolite (which is also the same mineral from which cesium is extracted- and both are used in atomic clocks.) Rb is the 16th most abundant metal on Earth, and 23rd most abundant element, overall (on Earth.)
Rubidium is also used- this is cool- to produce the Bose-Einstein Condensate which was predicted by Einstein in 1925, building on the work of Bose, and finally demonstrated 70 years later in '95 by Cornell and Wieman @ UC Boulder. The condensate occurs when groups of rubidium atoms are supercooled to near Absolute Zero (170 nanokelvin) and the atoms merge together- collapse- making an "atom blob"... and start behaving less like particles and more like waves! A quantum mechanical effect! No practical applications yet, but physicists are having fun with it. :)
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