• Question: What is you favourite element and do you like sausages?

    Asked by boomugotownedxd to Ant, Dan, Matt, Mike, Steph on 13 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Matt Maddock

      Matt Maddock answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Carbon is a great element – it’s the basis for all life on the planet (I think – I remember something about worms who use arsenic, but I don’t know if that was as a replacement for carbon, or something else), it conducts electricity, it makes pencils and coal and diamonds…plastics and oil and fuels, they all have carbon in them.

      And sausages are brilliant! I just wish my doctor hadn’t told me I had to eat more healthily, or I would eat a lot more sausages. I grew up in the Lake District where Cumberland Sausage comes from – my favourite was called Wabberthwaite sausage – simply delicious!

    • Photo: Stephanie Tomlinson

      Stephanie Tomlinson answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Molybdenum because it is impossible to pronounce.

      Sausages are ok but not my favourite food.

    • Photo: Dan Veal

      Dan Veal answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Mercury, if only it wasn’t toxic so we could play with it, it sticks to itself in globs and is amazing. My parents said they used to play with it in science class at school, that was before they realized touching it gives you mercury poisoning…. oops.

      Beef sausages are the best.

    • Photo: Anthony Hollingsworth

      Anthony Hollingsworth answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      gold, i just like it. although it doesnt do anything other than look pretty… maybe if im feeling like something a bit more fun id say francium because you can blow stuff up with it. Im a bit fan of german sausages! i live off those things while im in the alps

    • Photo: Mike Salter

      Mike Salter answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Mine is Silicon. It forms the basis of pretty much all electronics so is really important to the modern world. Silicon is fairly special because as it’s what known as a “semiconductor”. You’ve heard of materials being either conductors and insulators, yeh? Well a semiconductor lies somewhere between the two, it conducts electricity but not very well.

      Initially it might sound like Silicon would be rubbish in electronics if it doesn’t conduct electricity very well. But by adding other materials to the silicon (in a process known as “doping”) we can really accurately control whether it conducts or not, and therefore it can be used to make really complicated circuits on a really small scale. Without silicon your iPhone would be the size of a house! (or, perhaps worse, it probably wouldn’t exist at all)

      Sausages are great, but they have to be decent ones!

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