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As of 2019, there are 118 known elements, about 80 of which are stable – that is, they do not change by radioactive decay into other elements. Some elements can occur as more than a single chemical substance . For instance, oxygen exists as both diatomic oxygen (O 2) and ozone (O 3). The majority of elements are classified as metals.
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 ...
[16] [17] [18] A molecule may be homonuclear, that is, it consists of atoms of one chemical element, as with two atoms in the oxygen molecule (O 2); or it may be heteronuclear, a chemical compound composed of more than one element, as with water (two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom; H 2 O). A molecule is the smallest unit of a substance that ...
A synthetic element is one of 24 known chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor, a particle accelerator, or the explosion of an atomic bomb; thus, they are called "synthetic", "artificial", or "man-made". The synthetic elements are those ...
The two general trends in the remaining stellar-produced elements are: (1) an alternation of abundance in elements as they have even or odd atomic numbers (the Oddo–Harkins rule), and (2) a general decrease in abundance as elements become heavier. Iron is especially common because it represents the minimum energy nuclide that can be made by ...
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. [1] It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during reactions with other substances.
For example, if one tried to demonstrate it using the hydrocarbons decane (C 10 H 22) and undecane (C 11 H 24), one would find that 100 grams of carbon could react with 18.46 grams of hydrogen to produce decane or with 18.31 grams of hydrogen to produce undecane, for a ratio of hydrogen masses of 121:120, which is hardly a ratio of "small ...
Of the 94 natural elements, eighty have a stable isotope and one more has an almost-stable isotope (with a half-life of 2.01×10 19 years, over a billion times the age of the universe). [15] [b] Two more, thorium and uranium, have isotopes undergoing radioactive decay with a half-life comparable to the age of the Earth.