• Question: What is your favourite element on the periodic table?

    Asked by Joe Mitchell :) to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 15 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Dawn Lau

      Dawn Lau answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      My favourite element is helium. It’s the second lightest element and it’s what causes balloons to float and I love balloons. It also temporarily gives you a squeaky voice if you breathe it in. But don’t do this at home, breathing in helium can be really dangerous!

    • Photo: Sian Thomas

      Sian Thomas answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Magnesium – it is the element that makes plants green and is a key component in photosynthesis. All food is derived from plants and so it really is fundamental with out being one of the obvious one.

      Second has to be iron!

    • Photo: David Robertson

      David Robertson answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      Strontium, because it is named after Strontian, a small Scottish village where it was first found ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontian ) and I used to go on holiday very close by.

    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 19 Jun 2016:

      This is a great question – it was asked by the Royal Society a few years ago to a number of famous scientists. My favourite element is oxygen. Plants convert CO2 to O2, and animals convert O2 to CO2. It’s a perfect cycle! We rely on oxygen, without it we would die! In terms of my research, mitochondria use oxygen and products from the breakdown of glucose in a process called aerobic respiration to produce our cellular energy, called ATP!

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