what are humans made up of?

[aaronmyung]

Hey guys,

This has been bothering me for a while now.

What are we made up of? Everything can be broken down into elements right?

Well, what is my skin made out of? What are the muscles in my arms made up of?

I tend to think of them as being just skin and muscles, but its gotta be more then that.

[MolecularMan14]

Atoms (I should hope). To be more specific: neutrons, protons, and electrons. But then we can get into more quantum answers, but Im fairly sure that's not what you were looking for. Or was it?

[aaronmyung]

well yeah, atoms n stuff. But how about in elements? like i know I have oxygen in my blood etc. But I've always wondered what my skin is I mean, it'd have to be classed under some element or sometihng right? (Sorry, I was never any good at chemistry n stuff )

[blike]

In short, lots and lots of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Things like skin aren't single elements. They're complex arrangements of elements, again mostly C, O, and H.

[aaronmyung]

cool, thanks mate

[Mokele]

There's also a good bit of Nitrogen (protiens, mostly) and phosphorous (DNA and other things like ATP and phospholipids). Plus there's a fair bit of Sodium, Chlorine and Potassium in solution in our body's water (one way of looking at it is that we never left the ocean, we just took it with us internally, since our body fluids are of very similar concentration to sea water).

 

Oh, and some iron in the red blood cells and muscles.

 

Mokele

[Skye]

And the other transition metals; manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt, copper, zinc and tungsten, as well as magnesium, sulphur, silicon, flourine, chlorine, boron, selenium and iodine.

[Bettina]

Don't forget Sugar and Spice and everthing nice....

 

Bettina

[AL]

There's also a good bit of Nitrogen (protiens' date=' mostly) and phosphorous (DNA and other things like ATP and phospholipids). Plus there's a fair bit of Sodium, Chlorine and Potassium in solution in our body's water (one way of looking at it is that we never left the ocean, we just took it with us internally, since our body fluids are of very similar concentration to sea water).

 

Oh, and some iron in the red blood cells and muscles.

 

Mokele[/quote']

Minor nitpick, but seawater doesn't have the same solute concentration as your body's interstitial fluid. It's actually substantially more hypertonic, that's why drinking it will dehydrate you.

[ecoli]

Don't forget Sugar and Spice and everthing nice....

 

But that's only what little girls are made of.

[Mokele]

Minor nitpick, but seawater doesn't have the same solute concentration as your body's interstitial fluid. It's actually substantially more hypertonic, that's why drinking it will dehydrate you.

 

True, my bad. What I was generally getting at is we're salty water, though, and fairly close, even if not on the nose.

 

Mokele

[mmalluck]

Plus there's a fair bit of Sodium' date=' Chlorine and Potassium in solution in our body's water (one way of looking at it is that we never left the ocean, we just took it with us internally, since our body fluids are of very similar concentration to sea water).

[/quote']

 

If I'm not mistaken the concentration of salts in our body resemble what the sea looked like hundreds of millions of years ago, when our ancestors left it. Most land animals share the same salt concentration. The seas have only gotten more salty over time (salt from the land ends up getting dumped in the ocean thru erosion).