The chemistry-lab wall

By Samantha Weinberg

The periodic table is a fixture on the chemistry-lab wall. Every schoolchild should know its crenellated shape, and be able to recite the top line, at least: hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium...But how many of us have given much thought to the essential importance of the 94 elements that occur in nature? As the blurb for the film project “94 Elements” says: “Together they make up everything in the world.” That could be overwhelming, but the man behind “94 Elements”, Mike Paterson, breaks it down with four-to-seven-minute films, each with a different author and its own story, showing how an element is used. For Carbon (atomic number 6), a West African film-maker explores the life of a diamond miner in Sierra Leone; Phosphorus (15) examines the use of white phosphorus in the Palestinian territories; in Gadolinium (64), Nino Kirtadze ventures inside an MRI machine in Tbilisi to look at image contrast. More than a series of films, “94 Elements” straddles several media, inviting us to participate via games, an app, Twitter and live commodity-price streams, and even to make our own mini-movies—a suitable ambition for a project about the very stuff of life.
~ SAMANTHA WEINBERG

94 Elements pfilm.co.uk/94elements.html; 94elements.com, from May 1st