(ORDO NEWS) — Everyone remembers from school that water consists of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. We will not give the formula of a person, but we will name the main components.
There are 118 elements in Mendeleev’s periodic table. Everyone has their place in the table, but not in the human body. “97% of our body is just four elements,” says Stephen Townsend, a chemist at Vanderbilt University. We list.
What is a person made of?
1. Oxygen
The palm is certainly in the good old oxygen. It accounts for approximately 65-67% of the composition of the human body. Stephen Townsend will confirm the guess of many that this is due to water, which is about 50-60% in a person. Without oxygen, there is no question of any metabolism.
2. Carbon
Approximately 18-19% is carbon, which is not surprising, because this is one of the most common elements on the planet Earth. Carbon is the basis of fats, carbohydrates and proteins, so it is the main building block of the body and the foods we use to fuel it.
3. Hydrogen
And again water. The human body contains more hydrogen atoms than any other element, but it only makes up 9% to 10% of a person’s mass.
The atomic weight of oxygen and carbon is almost 16 and 12 times greater than that of hydrogen, respectively. In other words, it takes 16 hydrogen atoms to match the mass of one oxygen atom, so hydrogen only makes up one tenth of our mass.
4. Nitrogen
Who would have thought, but, according to Townsend, nitrogen in a person is about 3%. It is the most common gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is critical to proteins and their building blocks, the amino acids.
Nitrogen is also the main component of DNA and RNA. Both have cytosine, adenine and guanine; DNA contains thymine and RNA contains uracil. In other words, without nitrogen, the cells in your body could not store genetic information or reproduce.
5. Bonus!
The fifth most abundant in the human body is calcium – from 1% to 2% of a person’s body weight. More than 99% of this calcium is found in bones and teeth, according to the National Institutes of Health.
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