Iron? Like iron?

Maybe maybe maybe
byu/Make-this-popular inmaybemaybemaybe

Yes, like iron.

I'm reminded of a question that one of my former students asked me quite a few years ago. We were two thirds of the way through the year of honors chemistry, and she said that she had been reading the ingredients on her toothpaste the day before and found sodium fluoride. She asked if that was the same sodium and the same fluorine that we'd been talking about all year.

"Yes," I said, "it's the same elements."

She followed up, "so, are there other things in my house that are made of elements?"

"Yeah," I answered, "everything in your house - and the house itself - is made of elements."

"Like, the same elements on the periodic table?"

Clearly, Sarah (or maybe it was Sara - it's been a while since this conversation) was one of the lucky ten thousand that day.

I've done the iron demonstration below in class before - though I used a blender to get even more iron particles out of the cereal by chopping it finer.

The video at the top, of course, also shows one of the lucky ten thousand today.