Question: what is your favorite element and why?

Clara Nellist answered on 19 Mar 2014:

I think I’m going to have to say Carbon. It’s not the most exciting element to chose from (like some of the radioactive ones) but it’s the most versatile, by which I mean we can make it into so many different things!

For example, about 20% of you or me is made up of carbon. And if the structure of how it bonds to itself is changed then we can get diamonds! Or graphite (like in a pencil). Then there’s also grapheme. This was discovered in 2004 by scientists at the University of Manchester (where I used to study) – they got the Nobel prize for it in 2010! Graphene is a single atom-thick layer of carbon, and it has some amazing properties! It’s very good at conducting heat and electricity, very nearly see-through… too many to list here. Companies are rushing to be the first to make new technology with graphene. One that I heard about recently was contact lenses that would be able to let us see other wavelengths of light. Like infra-red (they use that on animal programmes to see animals in the dark), or even UV!