[irishjuggler]

I remember my 7th grade science teacher making a claim that if you could remove a proton or 3 from mercury, lead, bismuth, etc. you’d have gold. I couldn’t really wrap my head around the concept of a different metal becoming gold, but here we are, I guess. At least in minuscule quantities.

[goldbux]

From Row six of the Periodic Table, you would have to remove:
one proton from mercury [Hg]
two protons from thallium [Tl]
three protons from lead [Pb]
four protons from bismuth [Bi]
five protons from polonium [Po]
. . .