Physics

Here's my favourite element – what's yours?

A Nobel laureate, a comedian and a cast of chemists share their favourite elements, from a signature of alien life to a source of comic book superpower

27 February 2019

Silicon

Frances Arnold is a chemist at the California Institute of Technology. She won the 2018 Nobel prize in chemistry for her work on evolved enzymes

Silicon is readily available on Earth in the form of sand. In the periodic table, it sits just below carbon, the element that nature uses to build DNA, proteins and other molecules of life. Why wasn’t silicon chosen? Can life build organosilicon compounds? We wanted to know, and discovered that enzymes that forge carbon-silicon bonds could be evolved in a test tube. We are just beginning to explore the possibilities that exist for life.

Technetium

Lee Cronin is a chemist at the University of Glasgow, UK

Technetium is the lightest radioactive element and all of its isotopes are radioactive. It can be produced in any reasonable amount only in a nuclear reactor. That appeals to me because it means that if you found this element elsewhere in the cosmos it would be good evidence that intelligent alien life exists. Plus, it can be made from radioactive molybdenum, which is my next favourite element because I’m trying to make nanomachines using it.

Meitnerium

Helen Arney is a comedian who spent nine months learning a song that lists all 118 elements

On top of battling prejudice about her gender and Jewish background, physicist Lise Meitner was passed over for a share of the 1944 Nobel chemistry prize. She had worked with her friend Otto Hahn to discover nuclear fission in heavy elements – but Hahn alone got the prize. I like the fact that the periodic table recognises Meitner: there is no hahnium, but there is a meitnerium. And while there is a copy of the iconic element chart on my daughter’s bedroom wall, there isn’t a list of Nobel prizewinners.

Sodium

Martyn Poliakoff is a chemist at the University of Nottingham, UK. He starred in a series of videos about the elements

My mother’s first name was Ina. As a little girl, she abbreviated it to ‘Na, and when she became a grandmother she asked my children to call her that. So now, 27 years after her death, I still get a warm motherly feeling whenever I see Na in a chemical formula. I am also fond of hassium, element 108, because in our first video about it, I was recorded saying “I know nothing about hassium. Should we make something up?”.

New Scientist Default Image — SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock Photo

Oxygen

Helen Sharman is a chemist who was the first Briton in space, visiting the Mir space station in 1991. She now works at Imperial College London.

Oxygen is a fascinating combination of being fundamental to life yet dangerously reactive. In space, I was keenly aware of the need to maintain the right amount of oxygen in the station air and I was grateful that liquid oxygen in the rocket had burned the kerosene fuel to provide thrust for launch without exploding. As ozone, oxygen protects us from some of the sun’s ultra violet radiation and oxygen binds to hydrogen to give another life-giving substance: water.

Strontium

Rowan Hooper is head of features at New Scientist

I first learned about radioactivity and its mutagenic consequences as a kid reading the classic 2000AD comic strip, Strontium Dog. It’s about a band of future bounty hunters all carrying different mutations as a result of exposure to strontium 90. Strontium is not the nicest of elements, granted, but as a child I was fascinated by its exoticism and danger, and when I later found out that it forms the beautiful mineral celestine, and that it is named after the Scottish village where it was discovered (Strontian) its place in my heart was secured.

Mercury

Bibiana Campos-Seijo is the editor in chief of Chemical and Engineering News

I like mercury because it is as beautiful as it is toxic. It is also the only metal that is liquid at everyday temperatures and pressure. Equally, there aren’t many elements that can be credited with making a contribution to the English language. The expression “mad as a hatter”, which many of us associate with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, originates from the shakes and tremors that were a sign of mercury poisoning suffered by hatters during production of felt in the 19th century.

What’s your favourite element? Let us know on Twitter @newscientist with the hashtag #periodictable

Check out the rest of our special on the 150th anniversary of the periodic table: