The Stardust That Made Us

Imagine that nature has an unseen cookbook full of different recipes for making everything you've ever encountered, from fish to fingernails and sand to Saturn. The 'ingredients' are known as chemical elements and there are 118 that we know about so far, which are organised in a grid called the Periodic Table. Some occur in nature, some are man-made, some are dangerous, some are invisible, some are very useful, some are vital for life on Earth, some can create beautiful gemstones, some glow blue.