, 15 August 2019
Meet Michelle Neil. She’s a forensic analyst and our poetry competition judge!
Image: Supplied by Michelle Neil
Is there a chemical element you love the most? To celebrate the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019, Double Helix is running a poetry competition for school-aged students with support from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI).
Meet our chemistry expert and competition judge, Michelle Neil!
As a forensic analyst, I help to find out how people died. I test blood, urine, liver and vitreous humour (the fluid from inside your eyeball) for drugs the person may or may not have been taking before they died.
When I was a kid I used to constantly ask my parents “why?” Sometimes they didn’t know and that frustrated me. As I grew older I realised that everything around me was basically a chemical or a mix of chemicals – water, air, medicine, even food! So if I wanted to know the answer to “why?” I had to study chemistry.
My favourite element is lithium (Li). It’s the third element in the periodic table, but is also a metal that is soft enough to cut with a knife.
In its metallic form, lithium is extremely flammable. It has to be stored in mineral oil so it doesn’t come into contact with oxygen – and explode!
In small amounts, lithium is used for smartphone batteries, heat-resistant glass, ceramics and the pink/red colour in fireworks. And lithium salts are used as a medicine to treat people with mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder.
I love that this soft metal has so many uses!
This competition has now closed. Winning poems will appear in Double Helix Issue 36 (release date 1 December 2019), subscribe now to receive this issue.
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9 September, 2019 at 2:52 am
https://doublehelixshop.csiro.au/en/Competitions/Periodic-Table
This link doesn’t working.
9 September, 2019 at 8:56 am
The competition has now closed. I’ve updated the post to reflect this.