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A chemical element is a chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons.The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8, meaning each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its nucleus.
The chemical elements are often displayed in a periodic table that is laid out to display recurring chemical properties, and elements with the same number of valence electrons form a group that is aligned in the same column of the table. (The horizontal rows correspond to the filling of a quantum shell of electrons.)
Columns are determined by the electron configuration of the atom; elements with the same number of electrons in a particular subshell fall into the same columns (e.g. oxygen, sulfur, and selenium are in the same column because they all have four electrons in the outermost p-subshell). Elements with similar chemical properties generally fall ...
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 ...
The quest for new elements is usually described using atomic numbers. As of 2025, all elements with atomic numbers 1 to 118 have been observed. Synthesis of new elements is accomplished by bombarding target atoms of heavy elements with ions, such that the sum of the atomic numbers of the target and ion elements equals the atomic number of the ...
Atomicity is the total number of atoms present in a molecule of an element. For example, each molecule of oxygen (O 2) is composed of two oxygen atoms. Therefore, the atomicity of oxygen is 2. [1] In older contexts, atomicity is sometimes equivalent to valency. Some authors also use the term to refer to the maximum number of valencies observed ...
A neutral atom has the same number of electrons as protons. Thus different isotopes of a given element all have the same number of electrons and share a similar electronic structure. Because the chemical behaviour of an atom is largely determined by its electronic structure, different isotopes exhibit nearly identical chemical behaviour.
Period 5 has the same number of elements as period 4 and follows the same general structure but with one more post transition metal and one fewer nonmetal. Of the three heaviest elements with biological roles, two (molybdenum and iodine) are in this period; tungsten, in period 6, is heavier, along with several of the early lanthanides.