• Question: What is your favourite element?

    Asked by anon-182152 on 16 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 16 Jun 2018:

      Helium is always great fun for balloons and for making your voice sound interesting!

    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 17 Jun 2018:

      Good question! I think mine would be Potassium. It is essential for life and is important for maintaining fluid and electrolyte (an electrically conducting solution) balance in the human body. Its important for muscle function- including the heart. But mostly I remember it from chemistry class at school when we would add it to water and watch it explode with purple flames!

    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Osmium – the densest (and one of the rarest) elements of them all – but has a surprisingly wide array of uses in electrics and, apparently, fountain-pen tips!

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Mine is Mercury as it’s the only metallic element that is liquid at the standard conditions for temperature and pressure. I just love the fact it is a metallic liquid! It seems so contradictory! And because it is deadly, I feel it gives it that ‘mysterious, dark, dangerous’ feel – as much so as an element can be that is!

    • Photo: Joanne Sharpe

      Joanne Sharpe answered on 22 Jun 2018:

      I watched a programme on TV about rare elements and where we find them in our daily lives – it was really cool! I am gonna say Francium because it is the most unstable element – has a half-life of only 22 minutes which means it hardly ever actually exists, it just disappears immediately! There is less than 30g of Francium on Earth at any one time.

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