• Question: Whats your favourite element and why? :D :D

    Asked by engld002 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 16 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by gabriellenj, leahralston123.
    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Technetium.

      There are no stable isotopes of technetium – this means it does not occur naturally. So it was the very first element to be created by humans. This was done by Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier in 1937. And guess what… it was made in an accelerator!

      These days it’s used as a radioactive tracer inside the body. This way you can check out, for instance, whether your kidneys are working correctly.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Carbon – without it life would not exist.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Copper, its really useful now and through history, and of course I spent 3 years investigating it through my phd.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      gold, beauuuuutiful goooooooold

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Ytterbium, the thinking man’s transition metal.

      Only picking it because I’ve used a lot and the others have already got all of the good ones 🙁

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