The Elements We Live By: How Iron Helps Us Breathe, Potassium Lets Us See, and Other Surprising Superpowers of the Periodic Table

The periodic table as youve never seen it beforestarring the elements that power our bodies and our way of life Some elements get all the attention: glittering gold, radioactive uraniummaterials we call precious because they are so rare. But what could be more precious than the building blocks of lifefrom the oxygen in our air to the carbon in all living things? In The Elements We Live By, physicist and award-winning author Anja Royne reminds us that wed be lost without the quiet heroes of the periodic table. Our bodies need phosphorous to hold our DNA together, potassium to power our optic nerves, and many more elementsin just the right amountsto function. Other fundamental elements keep our technology (and society) running: Our phones contain arsenic, boron, and gallium to control signals and store information; indium and tin for the touch screen; and lithium for the battery. Everything is made of elementsevery galaxy, star, and planetfrom the iron in Earths core to the silicon in its sand. But that doesnt mean the elements we rely on will never run out; for example, about half of the lithium we need is extracted from rocks in Australia, and the other half is from saltwater in Argentina and Chile. As Royne travels the world to find where these elements exist (some in ever-shrinking amounts), she shows how vitally urgent it is for us to protect themthe elements of our very existence.