• Question: How many elements are their to the human body?

    Asked by nerd101 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark on 23 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      See my answer to this one:

      /subatomicn11-zone/2011/11/how-many-elements-are-there-in-the-human-body

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      hi nerd101,

      From a different perspective there are quite a few types of elements in the human body, But i was quite surprised to find out quite how many. So here is a list I found with some proportions

      Oxygen (65%)
      Carbon (18%)
      Hydrogen (10%)
      Nitrogen (3%)
      Calcium (1.5%)
      Phosphorus (1.0%)
      Potassium (0.35%)
      Sulfur (0.25%)
      Sodium (0.15%)
      Magnesium (0.05%)
      Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
      Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

      Interestingly when we are looking at protein structures at Diamond, we rely on the fact that there are some heavier elements in the proteins (like the metals) to be able to work out the rest of the structure.

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