A Body in Jars

The Festival of Materials & Making - Kings College London

‘A Body in Jars’ is a collection of the chemical elements of life, and an exploration of their incredible role in making you what you are. The human body is really just a big chemistry set, shuffling elements around to make a huge range of miraculous materials. Almost 99% of your mass is made of only six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Of the 92 naturally occurring elements found on earth, it seems stunning that our bodies consist almost completely of only six of these elemental building blocks. However, the remaining 1% of your mass constitutes a large variety of other elements, all present in tiny amounts but performing some absolutely vital roles.