Twitter’s self appointed ‘@sciencegoddess’ – a.k.a. Joanne Manaster, a science educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wants to know what your favourite element is. She’s gotten a lot of response, rendered in 140 character ‘tweets,’ which shouldn’t surprise. It’s chemistry week, after all. Moreover, she says “Most people even if they’ve just gotten through high school science have been exposed to the elements – the periodic table of the elements, that is.” Many of the responses reveal, if briefly, people’s personal and intellectual connections to the building blocks of the universe.

So far Carbon seems to be winning with Tungsten pulling its weight. Much credit is given to @oliversacks, whose book Uncle Tungsten was inspired by a family member who manufactured light bulbs and had, like Sacks and Manaster, a knack for inspiring a love of science.

Read on for more elemental twestimonials:

@nysci Hydrogen 1st & most abundant element formed in universe. Fave fuel of the stars.

@LabSpaces Mine’s Arsenic, it’s killer.

@drkiki My favorite element is Molybdenum… shiny metal, awesome name, possibly involved in evolution of life thru catalysis!

@ajoohoo I’m a smith, my favorite is gold because u don’t have to anneal it, it doesn’t oxidize & it’s luster is proven “2 die 4”

@zippyg2 Professor, I’d go with potassium (K) because it’s in one of my favorite beverages– orange juice!

@grahamfarmelo I’ve always favoured the flighty technetium – the lightest element with not one stable isotope

@edyong209 Caesium. Video of it destroying a bowl of water was v.influential in my school science days.

@abelpharmboy Fluorine: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9… Plus it is added to *lots* of drugs for activity and/or minimize metabolism