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The Oceanogràfic of Valencia and the Museum of Science and Water of Murcia join the commemoration of the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

The exhibition 'Atoms under water', produced by Avanqua-Oceanogràfic and directed by Manuel Toharia, shows in spectacular large-scale images the close relationship between various living beings of the Valencian aquarium and some very specific chemical elements.

The exhibition, which has been opened by the Councilor for Economic Promotion, Culture and European Programs, Jesús Pacheco, and which can be visited until September 22, seeks to correlate an event of enormous scientific significance with animal life as it manifests in the great Valencian aquarium.

All living beings contain only 11 atoms that are common to them.

The rest of atoms, up to 42 bioelements, are shared only by some animals or plants.

In this sample, what is wanted to explain is the importance of these and other elements in the face of certain very specific characteristics of certain living beings.

For example, we found that a strange crab that exists for hundreds of millions of years, the crab casserole, has blue blood instead of red, because it lacks iron, which is replaced by copper.

Therefore, the casserole crab and copper have a special relationship that we have shown through a spectacular photograph of this animal corresponding to the copper element.

Another example could be the pineapple fish and its relationship with tungsten, a metal that, in addition to being the heaviest bioelement, is also an essential nutrient for certain bacteria such as those that provide bioluminescence to the mouth of this animal.

And so, successively, up to a score of images that gloss these correlations between atoms and marine life.

The Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleiev published in 1869, for the first time in the history of science, a classification ordered by weight and chemical affinity of the atoms known in his time.

The importance of that work was so considerable that today, 150 years later, the UN has declared 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

Source: Ayuntamiento de Murcia