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All 11 are necessary for life. The remaining elements are trace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought on the basis of good evidence to be necessary for life. [1] All of the mass of the trace elements put together (less than 10 grams for a human body) do not add up to the body mass of magnesium, the least common of the 11 non-trace ...
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]
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]
Graphic representation of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. CHNOPS and CHON are mnemonic acronyms for the most common elements in living organisms. . "CHON" stands for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which together make up more than 95 percent of the mass of biological system
The uniformity of both specific types of molecules (the biomolecules) and of certain metabolic pathways are invariant features among the wide diversity of life forms; thus these biomolecules and metabolic pathways are referred to as "biochemical universals" [4] or "theory of material unity of the living beings", a unifying concept in biology ...
Plutonium (Pu, atomic number 94), first synthesized in 1940, is another such element. It is the element with the largest number of protons (atomic number) to occur in nature, but it does so in such tiny quantities that it is far more practical to synthesize it. Plutonium is known mainly for its use in atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. [4]
Two or more atoms is a molecule, like a dioxide. Many small molecules may combine in a chemical reaction to make up a macromolecule, such as a phospholipid. Multiple macromolecules form a cell, like a club cell. A group of cells functioning together as a tissue, for example, Epithelial tissue. Different tissues make up an organ, like a lung.
Atoms can attach to one or more other atoms by chemical bonds to form chemical compounds such as molecules or crystals. The ability of atoms to attach and detach from each other is responsible for most of the physical changes observed in nature. Chemistry is the science that studies these changes.