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A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
Each distinct atomic number therefore corresponds to a class of atom: these classes are called the chemical elements. [5] The chemical elements are what the periodic table classifies and organizes. Hydrogen is the element with atomic number 1; helium, atomic number 2; lithium, atomic number 3; and so on. Each of these names can be further ...
Elements discovered after 1814 were also assigned unique chemical symbols, based on the name of the element. The use of Latin as the universal language of science was fading, but chemical names of newly discovered elements came to be borrowed from language to language with little or no modifications.
The first letter is always capitalized. While the symbol is often a contraction of the element's name, it may sometimes not match the element's English name; for example, "Pb" for lead (from Latin plumbum) or "W" for tungsten (from German Wolfram). Elements which have only temporary systematic names are given temporary three-letter symbols (e.g ...
There are currently 118 known chemical elements with a wide range of physical and chemical properties. Amongst this diversity, scientists have found it useful to apply names for various sets of elements that have similar properties, to varying degrees. Many of these sets are formally recognized by the standards body IUPAC. [1]
41 of the 118 known elements have names associated with, or specifically named for, places around the world or among astronomical objects. 32 of these have names tied to the places on Earth, and the other nine are named after to Solar System objects: helium for the Sun; tellurium for the Earth; selenium for the Moon; mercury (indirectly), uranium, neptunium and plutonium after their respective ...
Chemical symbols are the abbreviations used in chemistry, mainly for chemical elements; but also for functional groups, chemical compounds, and other entities. Element symbols for chemical elements, also known as atomic symbols , normally consist of one or two letters from the Latin alphabet and are written with the first letter capitalised.
Here [Ne] refers to the core electrons which are the same as for the element neon (Ne), the last noble gas before phosphorus in the periodic table. The valence electrons (here 3s 2 3p 3) are written explicitly for all atoms. Electron configurations of elements beyond hassium (element 108) have never been measured; predictions are used below.