Element 20 in our International Year of the Periodic Table series with the Royal Society of Chemistry is calcium. Found in the body in our bones and teeth, calcium also pops up in cheese-making and construction work.
Element number 19 in our International Year of the Periodic Table series is potassium – used to make soaps, and also the reason that bananas are radioactive.
Best known for being everyone’s favourite chemistry pun (“all the good chemistry jokes argon”), argon is the next element in our International Year of the Periodic Table series. Though it’s an invisible gas, it pops up in a number of places in our everyday lives.
Here’s element number 17, chlorine, in our International Year of the Periodic Table series with the Royal Society of Chemistry. Chlorine is essential for safe drinking water, but also has a history of use in chemical warfare.
Element 16 in our International Year of the Periodic Table series is sulfur. Known since ancient times, but only confirmed as an element in the late 1700s, it’s responsible for a host of bad smells we encounter, and also finds uses in car tyres and gunpowder.
The latest element in our International Year of the Periodic Table series is phosphorus – essential for life, found in several forms, and the element that helps safety matches light when you strike them.