Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Parts-per-million cube of relative abundance by mass of elements in an average adult human body down to 1 ppm. About 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium ...
A definition of "matter" based on its physical and chemical structure is: matter is made up of atoms. [17] Such atomic matter is also sometimes termed ordinary matter. As an example, deoxyribonucleic acid molecules (DNA) are matter under this definition because they are made of atoms.
Democritus wrote that atoms and void are the only things that exist and that all other things are merely said to exist by social convention. [10] The objects humans see in everyday life are composed of many atoms united by random collisions and their forms and materials are determined by what kinds of atom make them up. [10]
A large fraction of the chemical elements that occur naturally on the Earth's surface are essential to the structure and metabolism of living things. Four of these elements (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen) are essential to every living thing and collectively make up 99% of the mass of protoplasm. [1]
A human hair is about a million carbon atoms wide. Atoms are smaller than the shortest wavelength of visible light, which means humans cannot see atoms with conventional microscopes. They are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using classical physics is not possible due to quantum effects.
Degenerate matter: Matter under very high pressure, supported by the Pauli exclusion principle. Electron-degenerate matter: Found inside white dwarf stars. Electrons remain bound to atoms but can transfer to adjacent atoms. Neutron-degenerate matter: Found in neutron stars.
Carbon atoms bond readily to other carbon atoms; this allows the building of arbitrarily long macromolecules and polymers in a process known as catenation. [ 20 ] [ 21 ] [ 22 ] "What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorus", per Stephen Hawking in a 2008 lecture ...
Matter in the plasma state has variable volume and shape, and contains neutral atoms as well as a significant number of ions and electrons, both of which can move around freely. The term phase is sometimes used as a synonym for state of matter, but it is possible for a single compound to form different phases that are in the same state of matter.