The Art of the Elements

This is something that we haven’t seen before though once you see it you wonder why not! Artist and programmer Randi Boice (under her Flickr name tankgirlrs) has given a new artistic lease of life to the Periodic Table of Elements by imagining the first ten in terms of art and photography.  So, take a look and see what you make of them. Click on each picture if you would like to read more about the artist’s concept. Plus, there are lots more examples of her very interesting and diverse work on her Flickr Photostream.

So there you have them - the first ten elements on the periodic table in all their glory. Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, florine and neon have never looked better.

Oxygen goes to Element-ary School

Everyone has to have their first day at school but for some it is more difficult with others. When it comes to little oxygen, that first day at element-ary school can be fraught with dangers as well as possibillities.

This very cool animation by Christopher Hendryx very clevery imagines young oxygen's first day - with all the fear that goes with it. Unfortunately for the poor little chap, some of the other kids turn out to be not the ideal playmates for which he was hoping.

I do wonder how many teachers know of this beautiful, entertaining, and educational animation.  Certainly if I was teaching a group of young students about the elements I would use this.  It's a great introduction to the Periodic Table.  As well as resonating with their own memories of their first day at school it also provides some valuable learning about what happens when oxygen gets together with other elements (shame what happened to poor little iron!).


This was created as Hendryx's thesis, produced at the Ringling College of Art an Design in the department of Computer Animation. If he is still looking for work in the industry my best advice would be to produce a few more of these and start selling them on DVD.

Alien Life Found On Earth

Scientists in Italy have discovered what they believe to be the first life form on Earth to be able to live its entire life without oxygen.  Until now it was thought that every living thing needed to use oxygen in one way or another in order to survive.  However, in an anoxic pit in the Mediterannean the scientist have found tiny life forms that do not use oxygen in any way to metabolise.

The title of this post may be misleading in as much as the life form is very much terrestrial but it is the most alien that anyone has ever come across on this planet (my way of apologising for hyperbole I guess).  They are thought to belong to the Loriciferan family (example of the left) and have been living in the anoxic pit for possibly millions of years.
 
Anoxic is the term that refers to areas of water (either on the land masses or oceans) that are depleted of dissolved oxygen.  Most places that are like this are prevented from oxygenising by a barrier, usually physical.

The pit in which these creatures have been discovered is not a unique phenomenon and it therefore begs the question whether there are other species like this on the planet.  Not only that but it may indicate that we may find life elsewhere in the solar system that we thought could not sustain it.  Scientists have been looking at the amount of methane in the atmosphere of Mars and pondering whether or not this indicates the presence of micro-organisms deep below the surface (methane being a by-product of any process of metabolism).  Perhaps they do not need oxygen up there either?

Click HERE for the whole story.

Image credit Wikimedia Commons